What is Temperature?

[a46geo]

I just visited a new (to me) HVAC site. One page heading asked "What is Temperature". It then goes on to explain the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius and how to convert from one to the other.

It didn't really answer the question, so I will ask here, what is "temperature"?

George

[Chad Fabry]

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/blynds/tmp.html

A link to a middle school teaching forum. Makes me feel inadequate.

[bjloden]

Originally posted by a46geo

It didn't really answer the question, so I will ask here, what is "temperature"?

George

It is a property of matter that reflects the amount of energy of motion of the component particles. The various scales such as Kelvin, Celsius, Fahrenheit are measurement units established as a standard much like English measurements of feet inches yards, miles vs Metric measurments.

One of the reasons that heat pumps operate in the winter is that even when the temperature is very cold say 0 deg. F, there is still motion of the air molecules and thus there is still "heat" energy that can be captured and moved inside. A heat pump will not operate at absolute zero but then again, nothing works a absolute zero because all of the energy has been removed.

[hausdok]

Man,

This bjloden guy is smart. He must work for NASA or something.[]

OT - OF!!!

M.

[allspec33351]

It is an amount of heat.

Captain

[Brian G]

Originally posted by bjloden

...nothing works at absolute zero because all of the energy has been removed.

Anyone who has been told by a beautiful girl that she "thinks of you like a brother" should be able to understand that concept. [:-indifferent]

Brian G.

Yeah...Been There, Done That [:-timebm]

[a46geo]

Pretty much as I expected.

1.Chad has more information than I can possible wade through much less digest.

2.Bill has the answer, but it so far over my head, I tip over backwards looking up at it. He also makes me envious of that Alabama climate. Since he never sees cold weather, he thinks heat pumps work in 0 degrees F.

3.Mike is rightfully impressed by Bills impressive knowledge.

4.Mitchell takes a couple more swigs, and sums it all up in 6 words.

And 5. Hubert hasn't seen the ball since the kick off.

[Norm]

Bill,

You couldn't be more incorrect. My wife works perfectly well at absolute zero.

NORM SAGE

[Jerry Simon]

As a side note, there technically isn't "cold", just different degrees of heat.

[Konrad]

Norm, I'm damned near crying here...

[a46geo]

As was already mentioned, "temperature" is the measurement of heat.

As Jerry said, there is really no such thing as cold, only the absence of heat.

Heat is molecular activity or movement. The faster the molecules in any substance are moving, the warmer the substance is. All molecular activity stops at -460 degrees below zero F. That is called absolute zero. It is hard to hold an ice cube in your hand and think that there is heat in it, but there is.

I don't know if anyone even cares about temperature, but when I saw the question on another site, a ton of interesting (to me) things came flooding back from my old teaching days.

Sorry, I will try not to indulge myself like this too much here.

George

[Brian G]

I saw a story on a news magazine type show once about a guy who had combined super deep-freeze equipment with a special computer program he had written. The idea was very interesting. It seems that all soild matter is made of molecules (or was it atoms?) which are dispersed in varying density (distance between the molecules). No matter how hard you try in fabricating a material, you will end up with variations in density. BUT, if you take any material down to absolute zero, the molecules will spontaneously realign themselves in perfectly even density. You have to do this very slowly though (hence the special program) or the stuff will just shatter.

Why bother? Well, according to the gentleman the net effect is to significantly improve a number of properties of almost any material, particularly durability in raw materials and minor imperfections in delicate macinery. He did everything from pantyhose to Harley engines, if you had the fee. Lots of expensive parts for expensive machinery, musical instruments (trumphet, sax, etc.), high-end specialized saw blades and drill bits, and on and on. I thought it was fascinating, really stuck in my mind.

Hey Bill, if I'm off on the atoms / molecules, correct me.

Brian G. [:-cold]