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What actually is temperature?


Question asked by: mrquestion

Asked on: 25 Jan 2010

Temperature is actually a measure of the excitation of particles in a given quantity.

What this means is that if you have a balloon full of air, say, then the temperature is a measure of how fast the particles of gas that make up the air are jostling and moving around the system.

If the air inside were warmed up then the excitation would increase, and so the temperature would rise. The more they move, the more energy they have, so it is a meaure of how much energy the particles in that system have.

And hence relationships can be drawn that make sense (not just through learning!) with things like temperature and pressure: if you increase the pressure then the molecules are closer together, knock into each other more, and therefore the temperature increases pro rata.

By: knowitall
Replied at: 25 Jan 2010
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