Recording the room temperature

An original fictional information text for reading practice.

The instrument store keeps wooden recorders that are used by different classes. Staff have begun taking temperature readings at the same time each morning. A midday reading taken after a busy class cannot be compared fairly with an early reading from an empty room, because the conditions are different.

The thermometer stays on the inner wall, away from the radiator and the window. A reading beside either could describe a local hot or cold patch rather than the conditions around the stored instruments. Moving the thermometer to a more convenient shelf would change what the figures represent.

The log includes a note about unusual events, such as the door being left open during a delivery. Without that note, a sudden low reading might be treated as evidence that the heating had failed. Staff also write the actual figure instead of “normal”. The word could mean different things to different people and would make a small developing change hard to see.

A gap in the record remains a gap. Nobody copies the previous day’s number into an empty space to make the chart look complete. The teacher responsible for the store needs to know where the evidence is missing as well as what the measured figures show.

Explain why the store uses these rules for its temperature log.