As humans, we know when something is hot and cold by either touching it, or feeling it on our skin. Temperature is a physical property of a system that underlies the common notions of hot and cold; something that is hotter has the greater temperature. Temperature is one of the principal parameters of thermodynamics. The temperature of a system is defined as simply the average energy of microscopic motions of a single particle in the system per degree of freedom. For a solid, these microscopic motions are principally the vibrations of the constituent atoms about their sites in the solid. For an ideal monatomic gas, the microscopic motions are the translational motions of the constituent gas particles. For multiatomic gas vibrational and rotational motion should be included too.
Temperature is measured with thermometers that may be calibrated to a variety of temperature scales. In most of the world (except for the United States, Jamaica, and a few other countries), the Celsius scale is used for most temperature measuring purposes. The entire scientific world (the U.S. included) measures temperature using the Celsius scale, and thermodynamic temperature using the Kelvin scale (which is just a simple shifting of the Celsius scale). Many engineering fields in the U.S., especially high-tech ones, also use the Kelvin and Celsius scales. The bulk of the U.S. however, (its lay people, industry, popular meteorology, and government) relies upon the Fahrenheit scale. Other engineering fields in the U.S. also rely upon the Rankine scale (a shifted Fahrenheit scale) when working in thermodynamic-related disciplines such as combustion.
Intuitively, temperature is a measure of how hot or cold something is. On the molecular level, temperature is the result of the motion of particles which make up a substance. Temperature increases as the energy of this motion increases. The motion may be the translational motion of the particle, or the internal energy of the particle due to molecular vibration or the excitation of an electron energy level. Although very specialized laboratory equipment is required to directly detect the translational thermal motions, thermal collisions by atoms or molecules with small particles suspended in a fluid produces Brownian motion that can be seen with an ordinary microscope. The thermal motions of atoms are very fast and temperatures close to absolute zero are required to directly observe them. For instance, when scientists at the NIST achieved a record-setting cold temperature of 700 nK (1 nK = 10−9 K) in 1994, they used optical lattice laser equipment to adiabatically cool caesium atoms. They then turned off the entrapment lasers and directly measured atom velocities of 7 mm per second in order to calculate their temperature.
Molecules, such as O2, have more degrees of freedom than single atoms: they can have rotational and vibrational motions as well as translational motion. An increase in temperature will cause the average translational energy to increase. It will also cause the energy associated with vibrational and rotational modes to increase. Thus a diatomic gas, with extra degrees of freedom like rotation and vibration, will require a higher energy input to change the temperature by a certain amount, i.e. it will have a higher heat capacity than a monatomic gas.
The process of cooling involves removing energy from a system. When there is no more energy able to be removed, the system is said to be at absolute zero, which is the point on the thermodynamic (absolute) temperature scale where all kinetic motion in the particles comprising matter ceases, such as when water freezes and they are at complete rest in the “classic” (non-quantum mechanical) sense. By definition, absolute zero is a temperature of precisely 0 kelvins (−273.15 °C or −459.67 °F).
The definition of a hot drink is one that has a high temperature, or one that people consider to be rather good, which can mean extremely tasty or thirst quenching, or a combination of factors. Hence, a cold drink can be hot, such as the delicious new range of carbonated beverages and energy drinks you see below.
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Healthier alternative tastes for adventure capitalists
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