What is the relationship between temperature, heat, and kinetic energy?
1 Answer
Temperature is proportional to heat and is the measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules in a system.
Explanation:
As heat is introduced into a system, the molecules absorb the thermal energy and increase their kinetic energy. The measurement of temperature is the resultant impact of the exchange of kinetic energy between the system and the molecules or atoms within measuring instrument (ie. a thermometer using either mercury - atoms or alcohol - molecules ) or increase in thermal energy from a base line using the infra-red spectrum.
Hence the measurement of temperature is the measurement of the average kinetic energy within that system.
The system can be any thing from outdoors or car running temperature or anything else that one may wish to measure the temperature of.
