Temperature

This article is about the thermodynamic property. For other uses, see Temperature (disambiguation).

Annual mean temperature around the world

Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot. Quantitatively, temperature is measured with thermometers, which may be calibrated to a variety of temperature scales.

Much of the world uses the Celsius scale (°C) for most temperature measurements. It has the same incremental scaling as the Kelvin scale used by scientists, but fixes its null point, at 0°C = 273.15K, the freezing point of water. Few countries, most notably the United States, use the Fahrenheit scale for common purposes, a historical scale on which water freezes at 32 °F and boils at 212 °F.

For practical purposes of scientific temperature measurement, the International System of Units (SI) defines a scale and unit for the thermodynamic temperature by using the easily reproducible temperature of the triple point of water as a second reference point. For historical reasons, the triple point is fixed at 273.16 units of the measurement increment, which has been named the kelvin in honor of the Scottish physicist who first defined the scale. The unit symbol of the kelvin is K.

Temperature is one of the principal properties studied in the field of thermodynamics. Particularly important in this field are the differences in temperature between regions of matter, because such differences are the driving force for heat, which is the transfer of thermal energy. Spontaneously, heat flows only from regions of higher temperature to regions of lower temperature. If no heat is transferred between two objects, the objects have the same temperature.

In the classical thermodynamic approach to temperature, temperature of an object varies with the speed of the particles it contains, raised to the second power. Therefore, temperature is tied directly to the mean kinetic energy of particles moving relative to the center of mass coordinates for that object. Temperature is an intensive variable because it is independent of the bulk amount of elementary entities contained inside, be they atoms, molecules, or electrons. In order for the temperature of a system to be defined, the system must be in thermodynamic equilibrium. Temperature may be considered to vary with position only if, for every point, there is a small neighborhood around that point can be treated as a thermodynamic system in equilibrium (i.e. local thermodynamic equilibrium). In the statistical thermodynamic approach, degrees of freedom are used instead of particles.

In a more fundamental approach, the empirical definition of temperature arises from the conditions of thermodynamic equilibrium, expressed as the zeroth law of thermodynamics. When two systems are in thermal equilibrium, they have the same temperature, which is also a matter of common experience. The extension of this principle as an equivalence relation between multiple systems fundamentally justifies the use of a thermometer and prescribes the principles of its construction to measure temperature. While the zeroth law permits the definition of a set of many empirical scales of temperature, the second law of thermodynamics selects the definition of a single preferred, absolute temperature function, whence called the thermodynamic temperature. This function is the variation of the internal energy with respect to changes in the entropy of a system. Its natural, intrinsic origin or null point is absolute zero at which the entropy of any system is at a minimum. Although this is the lowest absolute temperature described by the model, the third law of thermodynamics postulates that absolute zero cannot be attained by any physical system.

Overview

Thermal vibration of a segment of protein alpha helix. The amplitude of the vibrations increases with temperature.

Macroscopically, temperature is related to the thermal energy held by matter. An immediate way of sensing this is by touching the material and deciding whether it is hot, warm, or cold. A thermometer precisely measures the temperature and indicates a numerical value for the temperature.

On the molecular level, temperature is the result of the motion of the particles that constitute the material. Moving particles carry kinetic energy. Temperature increases as this motion and the kinetic energy increase. The motion may be the translational motion of particles, or the 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 low temperature of 700 nK (1 nK = 10⁻⁹ K) in 1994, they used laser equipment to create an optical lattice to adiabatically cool caesium atoms. They then turned off the entrapment lasers and directly measured atom velocities of 7mm per second in order to calculate their temperature.

Molecules, such as oxygen (O₂), have more degrees of freedom than single spherical atoms: they undergo rotational and vibrational motions as well as translations. An increase in temperature will cause the average translational energy to increase. It will also cause, through equipartitioning, the energy associated with vibrational and rotational modes to increase. Thus a diatomic gas will require a higher energy input to increase its temperature by a certain amount, i.e. it will have a higher heat capacity than a monatomic gas.

The process of cooling involves removing thermal energy from a system. When no more energy can be removed, the system is at absolute zero, which cannot be achieved experimentally. Absolute zero is the null point of the thermodynamic temperature scale, also called absolute temperature. If it were possible to cool a system to absolute zero, all motion of the particles comprising matter would cease and they would be at complete rest in this classical sense. Microscopically in the description of quantum mechanics, however, matter still has zero-point energy even at absolute zero, because of the uncertainty principle.

Absolute zero is defined as a temperature of precisely 0 kelvins, which is equal to −273.15 °C or −459.68 °F.

Use in science

A map of global long term monthly average surface air temperatures in Mollweide projection.

Temperature plays an important role in all fields of natural science, including physics, geology, chemistry, atmospheric sciences and biology.

Many physical properties of materials including the phase (solid, liquid, gaseous or plasma), density, solubility, vapor pressure, and electrical conductivity depend on the temperature. Temperature also plays an important role in determining the rate and extent to which chemical reactions occur. This is one reason why the human body has several elaborate mechanisms for maintaining the temperature at 310 K, since temperatures only a few degrees higher can result in harmful reactions with serious consequences. Temperature also controls the thermal radiation emitted from a surface. One application of this effect is the incandescent light bulb, in which a tungsten filament is electrically heated to a temperature at which significant quantities of visible light are emitted.

For study and analysis, real world systems are usually spatially and temporally divided into cells of small size, in which classical thermodynamical equilibrium conditions for matter are fulfilled to good approximation (local thermodynamic equilibrium).

Foundation

The principles of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics provide a framework for the formal description of the properties of temperature. Temperature is defined empirically by the zeroth law of thermodynamics and has additional properties given in the second law. Statistical mechanics provides a detailed microscopic explanation based on the probabilistic properties of large ensembles of particles.

Temperature is a property determined by the average of a property of many particles and is defined in a state of at least local thermodynamic equilibrium, unlike other thermodynamic quantities, such as entropy and heat, whose microscopic definitions are valid even far away from equilibrium.

As a system receives heat, its temperature rises; similarly, a loss of heat from the system decreases its temperature. When two systems are at the same temperature, no heat transfer occurs between them. When a temperature difference does exist, heat will transfer from the warmer system to the colder system, until they are at thermal equilibrium. This transfer occurs via heat conduction.

Statistically, temperature (T) is a direct measure of the mean kinetic energy of the particles forming a sample of matter. For each degree of freedom that a particle possesses, the mean kinetic energy (E_k) of the particles is:

${\overline {E}}_{\text{k}}={\begin{matrix}{\frac {1}{2}}\end{matrix}}kT$,

where k is the Boltzmann constant, a fixed proportionality factor introduced by the system of units used to measure energy and temperature.

Macroscopically, temperature is related to the amount of internal energy and enthalpy of a system: the higher the temperature of a system, the higher its internal energy and enthalpy. For a system in thermal equilibrium at a constant volume, temperature is thermodynamically defined in terms of its energy (E) and entropy (S) as:

$T\equiv \left({\frac {\partial S}{\partial E}}\right)^{-1}$

Temperature is an intensive property of a system, meaning that it does not depend on the system size, the amount or type of material in the system, the same as for the pressure and density. By contrast, mass, volume, and entropy are extensive properties, and depend on the amount of material in the system.

Heat capacity

When a sample is heated, meaning it receives thermal energy from an external source, some of the introduced heat is converted into kinetic energy, the rest to other forms of internal energy, specific to the material. The amount converted into kinetic energy causes the temperature of the material to rise. The introduced heat ($\Delta Q$) divided by the observed temperature change is the heat capacity (C) of the material.

$C={\frac {\Delta Q}{\Delta T}}$

If heat capacity is measured for a well defined amount of substance, the specific heat is the measure of the heat required to increase the temperature of such a unit quantity by one unit of temperature. For example, to raise the temperature of water by one kelvin (equal to one degree Celsius) requires 4186 joules per kilogram (J/kg).

Temperature measurement

A typical Celsius thermometer measures a winter day temperature of -17°C.

See also: Timeline of temperature and pressure measurement technology, International Temperature Scale of 1990, and Comparison of temperature scales

Temperature measurement using modern scientific thermometers and temperature scales goes back at least as far as the early 18th century, when Gabriel Fahrenheit adapted a thermometer (switching to mercury) and a scale both developed by Ole Christensen Rømer. Fahrenheit's scale is still in use in the United States for non-scientific applications.

Temperature is measured with thermometers that may be calibrated to a variety of temperature scales. In most of the world (except for Belize, Myanmar, Liberia and the United States), the Celsius scale is used for most temperature measuring purposes. Most scientist measures temperature using the Celsius scale and the thermodynamic temperature using the Kelvin scale, which is the Celsius scale offset so that its null point is 0K = −273.15°C, or absolute zero. Many engineering fields in the U.S., notably high-tech and US federal specifications (civil and military), also use the Kelvin and Celsius scales. 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.

Units

The basic unit of temperature in the International System of Units (SI) is the kelvin. It has the symbol K.

For everyday applications, it is often convenient to use the Celsius scale, in which 0°C corresponds very closely to the freezing point of water and 100°C is its boiling point at sea level. Because liquid droplets commonly exist in clouds at sub-zero temperatures, 0°C is better defined as the melting point of ice. In this scale a temperature difference of 1 degree Celsius is the same as a 1kelvin increment, but the scale is offset by the temperature at which ice melts (273.15 K).

By international agreement the Kelvin and Celsius scales are defined by two fixing points: absolute zero and the triple point of Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water, which is water specially prepared with a specified blend of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes. Absolute zero is defined as precisely 0K and −273.15°C. It is the temperature at which all classical translational motion of the particles comprising matter ceases and they are at complete rest in the classical model. Quantum-mechanically, however, zero-point motion remains and has an associated energy, the zero-point energy. Matter is in its ground state, and contains no thermal energy. The triple point of water is defined as 273.16K and 0.01°C. This definition serves the following purposes: it fixes the magnitude of the kelvin as being precisely 1 part in 273.16 parts of the difference between absolute zero and the triple point of water; it establishes that one kelvin has precisely the same magnitude as one degree on the Celsius scale; and it establishes the difference between the null points of these scales as being 273.15K (0K = −273.15°C and 273.16K = 0.01°C).

In the United States, the Fahrenheit scale is widely used. On this scale the freezing point of water corresponds to 32 °F and the boiling point to 212 °F. The Rankine scale, still used in fields of chemical engineering in the U.S., is an absolute scale based on the Fahrenheit increment.

Conversion

The following table shows the temperature conversion formulas for conversions to and from the Celsius scale.

Temperature conversions

	from Celsius	to Celsius
Kelvin	x °C ≘ (x + 273.15) K	x K ≘ (x − 273.15) °C
Fahrenheit	x °C ≘ (x × 9/5 + 32) °F	x °F ≘ (x − 32) × 5/9 °C
Rankine	x °C ≘ (x + 273.15) × 9/5 °R	x °R ≘ (x − 491.67) × 5/9 °C

Plasma physics

The field of plasma physics deals with phenomena of electromagnetic nature that involve very high temperatures. It is customary to express temperature in electronvolts (eV) or kiloelectronvolts (keV), where 1 eV = 11605K. In the study of QCD matter one routinely encounters temperatures of the order of a few hundred MeV, equivalent to about 10¹²K.

Theoretical foundation

Historically, there are several scientific approaches to the explanation of temperature: the classical thermodynamic description based on empirical variables that can be measured in a laboratory, the kinetic theory of gases which relates the macroscopic description to the probability distribution of the energy of motion of gas particles, and a microscopic explanation based on statistical physics and quantum theory. In addition, rigorous and purely mathematical treatments have provided an axiomatic approach to classical thermodynamics and temperature. Statistical physics provides a deeper understanding by describing the atomic behavior of matter, and derives macroscopic properties from statistical averages of microscopic states, including both classical and quantum states. In the fundamental physical description, using natural units, temperature may be measured directly in units of energy. However, in the practical systems of measurement for science, technology, and commerce, such as the modern metric system of units, the macroscopic and the microscopic descriptions are interrelated by the Boltzmann constant, a proportionality factor that scales temperature to the microscopic mean kinetic energy.

The microscopic description in statistical mechanics is based on a model that decomposes a system into its fundamental particles of matter or into a set of classical or quantum-mechanical oscillators and considers the system as a statistical ensemble of microstates. As a collection of classical material particles, temperature is a measure of the mean energy of motion, called kinetic energy, of the particles, whether in solids, liquids, gases, or plasmas. Kinetic energy, a concept of classical mechanics, is one half the product of mass and the square of a particle's velocity. In this mechanical interpretation of thermal motion, the kinetic energies of material particles may reside in the velocity of the particles of their translational or vibrational motion or in the inertia of their rotational modes. In monoatomic perfect gases and, approximately, in most gases, temperature is a measure of the mean particle kinetic energy. It also determines the probability distribution function of the energy. In condensed matter, and particularly in solids, this purely mechanical description is often less useful and the oscillator model provides a better description to account for quantum mechanical phenomena. Temperature determines the statistical occupation of the microstates of the ensemble. The microscopic definition of temperature is only meaningful in the thermodynamic limit, meaning for large ensembles of states or particles, to fulfill the requirements of the statistical model.

In the context of thermodynamics, the kinetic energy is also referred to as thermal energy. The thermal energy may be partitioned into independent components attributed to the degrees of freedom of the particles or to the modes of oscillators in a thermodynamic system. In general, the number of these degrees of freedom that are available for the equipartitioning of energy depend on the temperature, i.e. the energy region of the interactions under consideration. For solids, the thermal energy is associated primarily with the vibrations of its atoms or molecules about their equilibrium position. In an ideal monatomic gas, the kinetic energy is found exclusively in the purely translational motions of the particles. In other systems, vibrational and rotational motions also contribute degrees of freedom.

Kinetic theory of gases

The temperature of an ideal monatomic gas is related to the average kinetic energy of its atoms. In this animation, the size of helium atoms relative to their spacing is shown to scale under 1950 atmospheres of pressure. These atoms have a certain, average speed (slowed down here two trillion fold from room temperature).

The kinetic theory of gases uses the model of the ideal gas to relate temperature to the average kinetic energy of the atoms in a container of gas. Classical mechanics defines the kinetic energy as follows:

$E_{\text{k}}={\begin{matrix}{\frac {1}{2}}\end{matrix}}mv^{2}$,

where m is the particle mass and v its velocity. The distribution of energies (and thus speeds) of the particles in any gas are given by the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. The temperature of a classical ideal gas is related to its average kinetic energy via the equation:

${\overline {E}}_{\text{k}}={\begin{matrix}{\frac {1}{2}}\end{matrix}}kT$,

for each degree of freedom, where $k=R/n$ (n= Avogadro number, R= ideal gas constant). This relation is valid in the classical regime, i.e. when the particle density is much less than $1/\Lambda ^{3}$, where $\Lambda$ is the thermal de Broglie wavelength. A monoatomic gas has only the three translational degrees of freedom.

The second law of thermodynamics states that any two given systems when interacting with each other will later reach the same average energy per particle and hence the same temperature.

In a mixture of particles of various masses, the heaviest particles will move slower than lighter particles, but have the same average kinetic energy. A neon atom moves slower relative to a hydrogen molecule of the same kinetic energy; a pollen particle suspended in water moves in a slow Brownian motion among fast moving water molecules.

Zeroth law of thermodynamics

If two systems of different temperatures are brought into thermal contact, they exchange heat accompanied by changes of other state variables. The system achieve a state of thermal equilibrium in which no further changes occur.

The mathematical description of thermal equilibrium forms a basis for the definition of temperature. This has been formulated as the zeroth law of thermodynamics which states that if two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other. Since all three are in thermal equilibrium, it is reasonable to postulate an empirical property that has the same value for all systems. This property is the temperature. It may be measured quantitatively by the variation of one of the other state variables, such as pressure, when all other coordinates are fixed. The transitive relation of thermal equilibrium permits the construction of a thermometer to measure this property.

A temperature scale is based on the properties of some reference system to which other thermometers may be calibrated. One such reference system is a fixed quantity of gas. The ideal gas law indicates that the product of the pressure (p) and volume (V) of a gas is directly proportional to the temperature:

$pV=nRT\,\!$

where T is temperature, n is the number of moles of gas and R = 8.314472(15) Jmol^-1K^-1 is the gas constant. Reformulating the pressure-volume term as the sum of classical mechanical particle energies in terms of particle mass, m, and root-mean-square particle speed v, the ideal gas law directly provides the relationship between kinetic energy and temperature:

$\displaystyle {\frac {1}{2}}mv_{rms}^{2}={\frac {3}{2}}kT.$

Thus, one can define a scale for temperature based on the corresponding pressure and volume of the gas: the temperature in kelvins is the pressure in pascals of one mole of gas in a container of one cubic metre, divided by the gas constant. In practice, such a gas thermometer is not very convenient, but other thermometers can be calibrated to this scale.

The pressure, volume, and the number of moles of a substance are all inherently greater than or equal to zero, suggesting that temperature must also be greater than or equal to zero. As a practical matter it is not possible to use a gas thermometer to measure absolute zero temperature since the gasses tend to condense into a liquid long before the temperature reaches zero. It is possible, however, to extrapolate to absolute zero by using the ideal gas law.

Second law of thermodynamics

In the previous section temperature was defined in terms of the zeroth law of thermodynamics. It is also possible to define temperature in terms of the second law of thermodynamics which deals with entropy. Entropy is a measure of the disorder in a system. The second law states that any process will result in either no change or a net increase in the entropy of the universe. This can be understood in terms of probability.

For example, in a series of coin tosses, a perfectly ordered system would be one in which either every toss comes up heads or every toss comes up tails. This means that for a perfectly ordered set of coin tosses, there is only one set of toss outcomes possible: the set in which 100% of tosses come up the same. On the other hand, there are multiple combinations that can result in disordered or mixed systems, where some fraction are heads and the rest tails. A disordered system can be 90% heads and 10% tails, or it could be 98% heads and 2% tails, et cetera. As the number of coin tosses increases, the number of possible combinations corresponding to imperfectly ordered systems increases. For a very large number of coin tosses, the combinations to ~50% heads and ~50% tails dominates and obtaining an outcome significantly different from 50/50 becomes extremely unlikely. Thus the system naturally progresses to a state of maximum disorder or entropy.

It has been previously stated that temperature controls the flow of heat between two systems and was just shown that the universe tends to progress so as to maximize entropy, which is expected of any natural system. Thus, it is expected that there is some relationship between temperature and entropy. To find this relationship, the relationship between heat, work and temperature is first considered. A heat engine is a device for converting thermal energy into mechanical energy, resulting in the performance of work, and analysis of the Carnot heat engine provides the necessary relationships. The work from a heat engine corresponds to the difference between the heat put into the system at the high temperature, q_H and the heat ejected at the low temperature, q_C. The efficiency is the work divided by the heat put into the system or:

${\textrm {efficiency}}={\frac {w_{cy}}{q_{H}}}={\frac {q_{H}-q_{C}}{q_{H}}}=1-{\frac {q_{C}}{q_{H}}}$ (2)

where w_cy is the work done per cycle. The efficiency depends only on q_C/q_H. Because q_C and q_H correspond to heat transfer at the temperatures T_C and T_H, respectively, q_C/q_H should be some function of these temperatures:

${\frac {q_{C}}{q_{H}}}=f(T_{H},T_{C})$ (3)

Carnot's theorem states that all reversible engines operating between the same heat reservoirs are equally efficient. Thus, a heat engine operating between T₁ and T₃ must have the same efficiency as one consisting of two cycles, one between T₁ and T₂, and the second between T₂ and T₃. This can only be the case if:

$q_{13}={\frac {q_{1}q_{2}}{q_{2}q_{3}}}$

which implies:

$q_{13}=f(T_{1},T_{3})=f(T_{1},T_{2})f(T_{2},T_{3})$

Since the first function is independent of T₂, this temperature must cancel on the right side, meaning f(T₁,T₃) is of the form g(T₁)/g(T₃) (i.e. f(T₁,T₃) = f(T₁,T₂)f(T₂,T₃) = g(T₁)/g(T₂)· g(T₂)/g(T₃) = g(T₁)/g(T₃)), where g is a function of a single temperature. A temperature scale can now be chosen with the property that:

${\frac {q_{C}}{q_{H}}}={\frac {T_{C}}{T_{H}}}$ (4)

Substituting Equation 4 back into Equation 2 gives a relationship for the efficiency in terms of temperature:

${\textrm {efficiency}}=1-{\frac {q_{C}}{q_{H}}}=1-{\frac {T_{C}}{T_{H}}}$ (5)

Notice that for T_C = 0 K the efficiency is 100% and that efficiency becomes greater than 100% below 0 K. Since an efficiency greater than 100% violates the first law of thermodynamics, this implies that 0 K is the minimum possible temperature. In fact the lowest temperature ever obtained in a macroscopic system was 20 nK, which was achieved in 1995 at NIST. Subtracting the right hand side of Equation 5 from the middle portion and rearranging gives:

${\frac {q_{H}}{T_{H}}}-{\frac {q_{C}}{T_{C}}}=0$

where the negative sign indicates heat ejected from the system. This relationship suggests the existence of a state function, S, defined by:

$dS={\frac {dq_{\mathrm {rev} }}{T}}$ (6)

where the subscript indicates a reversible process. The change of this state function around any cycle is zero, as is necessary for any state function. This function corresponds to the entropy of the system, which was described previously. Rearranging Equation 6 gives a new definition for temperature in terms of entropy and heat:

$T={\frac {dq_{\mathrm {rev} }}{dS}}$ (7)

For a system, where entropy S(E) is a function of its energy E, the temperature T is given by:

${T}^{-1}={\frac {d}{dE}}S(E)$ (8),

i.e. the reciprocal of the temperature is the rate of increase of entropy with respect to energy.

Definition from statistical mechanics

The previous section elaborated the historical derivation relating entropy and heat. A modern definition of temperature is given by statistical mechanics. It is defined in terms of the fundamental degrees of freedom of a system. Eq.(8) of the previous section is taken to be the defining relation of the temperature. Eq. (7) can be derived from first principles.

Generalized temperature from single particle statistics

It is possible to extend the definition of temperature even to systems of few particles, like in a quantum dot. The generalized temperature is obtained by considering time ensembles instead of configuration space ensembles given in statistical mechanics in the case of thermal and particle exchange between a small system of fermions (N even less than 10) with a single/double occupancy system. The finite quantum grand partition ensemble, obtained under the hypothesis of ergodicity and orthodicity, allows to express the generalized temperature from the ratio of the average time of occupation $\tau$₁ and $\tau$₂ of the single/double occupancy system :

$T=k^{-1}ln2{\frac {\tau _{\mathrm {2} }}{\tau _{\mathrm {1} }}}(E-E_{F}(1+{\frac {3}{2N}}))$

where E_F is the Fermi energy which tends to the ordinary temperature when N goes to infinity.

Negative temperature

Main article: Negative temperature

On the empirical temperature scales, which are not referenced to absolute zero, a negative temperature is one below the zero-point of the scale used. For example, dry ice has a sublimation temperature of −78.5°C which is equivalent to −109.3°F. On the absolute Kelvin scale, however, this temperature is 194.6 K. On the absolute scale of thermodynamic temperature no material can exhibit a temperature smaller than or equal to 0K, both of which are forbidden by the third law of thermodynamics.

In the quantum mechanical description of electron and nuclear spin systems that have a limited number of possible states, and therefore a discrete upper limit of energy they can attain, it is possible to obtain a negative temperature, which is numerically indeed less than absolute zero. However, this is not the macroscopic temperature of the material, but instead the temperature of only very specific degrees of freedom, that are isolated from others and do not exchange energy by virtue of the equipartition theorem.

A negative temperature is experimentally achieved with suitable radio frequency techniques that cause a population inversion of spin states from the ground state. As the energy in the system increases upon population of the upper states, the entropy increases as well, as the system becomes less ordered, but attains a maximum value when the spins are evenly distributed among ground and excited states, after which it begins to decrease, once again achieving a state of higher order as the upper states begin to fill exclusively. At the point of maximum entropy, the temperature function shows the behavior of a singularity, because the slope of the entropy function decreases to zero at first and then turns negative. Since temperature is the inverse of the derivative of the entropy, the temperature formally goes to infinity at this point, and switches to negative infinity as the slope turns negative. At energies higher than this point, the spin degree of freedom therefore exhibits formally a negative thermodynamic temperature. As the energy increases further by continued population of the excited state, the negative temperature approaches zero asymptotically. As the energy of the system increases in the population inversion, a system with a negative temperature is not colder than absolute zero, but rather it has a higher energy than at positive temperature, and may be said to be in fact hotter at negative temperatures. When brought into contact with a system at a positive temperature, energy will be transferred from the negative temperature regime to the positive temperature region.

Examples of temperature

	Temperature		Peak emittance wavelength of black-body radiation
	Kelvin	Degrees Celsius		Degrees Farenheit
Absolute zero (precisely by definition)	0 K	−273.15 °C	Infinite
Coldest measured temperature	450 pK	−273.14999999955 °C	6,400 km
One millikelvin (precisely by definition)	0.001 K	−273.149 °C	2.89777 m (radio, FM band)
Water's triple point (precisely by definition)	273.16 K	0.01 °C	10,608.3 nm (long wavelength I.R.)
Water's boiling point[A]	373.1339 K	99.9839 °C	7,766.03 nm (mid wavelength I.R.)
Incandescent lamp[B]	2500 K	≈2,200 °C	1,160 nm (near infrared)[C]
Sun's visible surface[D]	5,778 K	5,505 °C	501.5 nm (green-blue light)
Lightning bolt's channel[E]	28 kK	28,000 °C	100 nm (far ultraviolet light)
Sun's core[E]	16 MK	16 million °C	0.18 nm (X-rays)
Thermonuclear weapon (peak temperature)[E]	350 MK	350 million °C	8.3×10−3 nm (gamma rays)
Sandia National Labs' Z machine[E]	2 GK	2 billion °C	1.4×10−3 nm (gamma rays)[F]
Core of a high-mass star on its last day[E]	3 GK	3 billion °C	1×10−3 nm (gamma rays)
Merging binary neutron star system[E]	350 GK	350 billion °C	8×10−6 nm (gamma rays)
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider[E]	1 TK	1 trillion °C	3×10−6 nm (gamma rays)
CERN's proton vs nucleus collisions[E]	10 TK	10 trillion °C	3×10−7 nm (gamma rays)
Universe 5.391×10−44 s after the Big Bang[E]	1.417×1032 K	1.417×1032 °C	1.616×10−26 nm (Planck frequency)

• ^A For Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water at one standard atmosphere (101.325 kPa) when calibrated strictly per the two-point definition of thermodynamic temperature.
• ^B The 2500 K value is approximate. The 273.15 K difference between K and °C is rounded to 300 K to avoid false precision in the Celsius value.
• ^C For a true black-body (which tungsten filaments are not). Tungsten filaments' emissivity is greater at shorter wavelengths, which makes them appear whiter.
• ^D Effective photosphere temperature. The 273.15 K difference between K and °C is rounded to 273 K to avoid false precision in the Celsius value.
• ^E The 273.15 K difference between K and °C is without the precision of these values.
• ^F For a true black-body (which the plasma was not). The Z machine's dominant emission originated from 40 MK electrons (soft x–ray emissions) within the plasma.

See also

• Scale of temperature
• Color temperature
• Dry-bulb temperature
• Heat conduction
• Heat convection
• ISO 1
• ITS-90
• Maxwell's demon
• Orders of magnitude (temperature)
• Outside air temperature
• Planck temperature
• Rankine scale
• Relativistic heat conduction
• Stagnation temperature
• Thermal radiation
• Thermoception
• Thermodynamic (absolute) temperature
• Thermography
• Thermometer
• Body temperature (Thermoregulation)
• Virtual temperature
• Wet Bulb Globe Temperature
• Wet-bulb temperature

Further reading

• Chang, Hasok (2004). Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517127-3.
• Zemansky, Mark Waldo (1964). Temperatures Very Low and Very High. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand.
• T. J. Quinn (1983), Temperature, Academic Press, London.

External links

• An elementary introduction to temperature aimed at a middle school audience
• What is Temperature? An introductory discussion of temperature as a manifestation of kinetic theory.
• from Oklahoma State University