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See related editorial, "What's Hot and What's Not: The Gold Standard for Thermometry in Emergency Medicine." Study Objective: To determine normal body temperature with an infrared emission detection ear thermometer. Design: Cross-sectional convenience sample. Setting: Four acute and long-term health care facilities. Participants: Subjects who denied recent potentially febrile illness and ingestion of medications affecting normal body temperature. Results: Two thousand four hundred forty-seven subjects aged 12 hours to 103 years were enrolled. Ear temperatures were normally distributed for each of eight age groups. There were differences in mean temperature among different age groups (P<.001, by ANOVA) and a striking cutoff at adolescence; the mean temperature for children aged 3 days to 10 years was 36.78±0.47°C, as compared to 36.51±0.46°C for subjects 11 years and older (P<.001, by t test …