Zoe finds that the temperature of a substance is 12 degrees Celsius. What does this tell Zoe about the substance?

Temperature is related to the average kinetic energy of a substance’s particles: a higher temperature means greater average kinetic energy. So 12°C tells Zoe about the particles’ average kinetic energy, not the substance’s specific heat or potential energy. The kinetic energy is not literally “12 on the Celsius scale”; Celsius measures temperature.

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