What is temperature? What causes it? What are the effects of it? What types are there, if any.

1 Answer
Jan 25, 2018

Temperature simply stated, is an observable property that is due to the kinetic energy of the molecules in a substance.

Explanation:

The molecules in a substance are in constant motion, colliding elastically with one another. This causes some to acquire high velocity, while others could be moving quite slowly at a given instant. If you determine the average energy of motion (kinetic energy) that the molecules, you have a value that is directly related to the temperature you would observe for that substance.

Temperature is different from heat content, which also depends on the quantity of molecules in the substance. Thus, you can have a substance (like a very low-pressure gas) that has a very high temperature (very fast-moving molecules) but contains very little heat (as there are very few molecules).

One effect of temperature is to play a large role in the rate of chemical reactions - small increases in temperature can result in dramatic increases in the rate of a reaction.

Based on the discussion above, there is only one meaning to "temperature", although we have several scales that are used to measure it - Celsius, Kelvin, Fahrenheit, Rankine to name the most common.

Hope that helps.