What is the Difference Between Heat and Temperature?

by admin on June 26, 2008

Heat is the amount of total energy contained within an item; both potential energy and kinetic energy. Potential energy is stored energy and kinetic energy is moving energy. Temperature is a number that corresponds to the amount of kinetic energy in an object. When heat is introduced into a system, molecules move faster. When molecules move faster, they bump into each other harder and more often. These measure of the energy of these collisions is temperature. So, temperature can result from heat being introduced into an object; that is, heat is energy introduced into a system and one affect heat can have is to increase the temperature. Heat introduced into a system can also cause a phase change; like ice melting into water, with no subesquent speeding up of molecules, and therefore no temperature change.

In summary, heat is energy introduced into a system and is a measure of all the energy in an object. Temperature is proportional to the amount of kinetic energy an object has.

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