Specifically the ones that measure your temperature as opposed to the weather ones. I know about the mercury but is that in the ones you use for your temperature? And how to the touchless ones work?
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Mercury has not been used in thermometers for a fairly long time. Mercury thermometers relied on liquids expanding and contracting with temperature, and many substances other than mercury can do this. Even steel does this! Certain temperature sensors rely on different metals expanding at different speeds.
Thermometers use any technology that they can. Touchless ones use thermal radiation – all objects glow with a light based on their temperature. Hot enough ones glow visible, like the sun, but even you and I glow in infrared light. The thermometer just measures this light, does a bit of math, and tells a temperature.
Other thermometers use changes in the electrical properties of a material, such as it conducting electricity worse when it is hot or generating electricity when it is hot.
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