Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Absolute Temperature


a temperature measured on the KELVIN SCALE with respect to ABSOLUTE ZERO.

Taken from Dictionary of Science

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Absolute, or thermodynamic, temperature is conventionally measured in kelvins (Celsius-scaled increments) and in the Rankine scale (Fahrenheit-scaled increments) with increasing rarity. Absolute temperature measurement is uniquely determined by a multiplicative constant which specifies the size of the "degree", so the ratios of two absolute temperatures, T2/T1, are the same in all scales. The most transparent definition of this standard comes from the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. It can also be found in Fermi-Dirac statistics (for particles of half-integer spin) and Bose-Einstein statistics (for particles of integer spin). All of these define the relative numbers of particles in a system as decreasing exponential functions of energy (at the particle level) over kT, with k representing the Boltzmann constant and T representing the temperature observed at the macroscopic level.

Taken from Wikipedia

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