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Temperature

Primarygun
in Classical Physics

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Temperature is the measure of average kinetic energy of an object.

If I put a thermometer in a pencil case, and I throw the pencil case away, the reading does not change. However, the kinetic energy of any particles of the pencil case did vary. Why?

You didn't increase the KE of all the particles. At any given moment about half of the were moving in the opposite direction. But that's not completely relevant, since you usually measure temperature in the center-of-mass frame anyway. Movement of the COM doesn't add to the temperature.

 

But even if the work you did were to add to the temperature: Calculate the average speed of the particles of something at 300K to see what order of magnitude is relevant.

Temperature is related to the random motion of the particles of a substance, not the coherent motion of the entire object.

i think its pretty wierd how fast heat energy moves from atom to atom. Think of hopw fast it is on an atomic level.

is there an absolute high temperature?

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