What is hotter?

"What is hotter?" means we're comparing how warm two things feel.

Imagine you're holding a cup of hot chocolate and a cold ice cube. The hot chocolate feels hotter, right? That’s because it has more heat energy than the ice cube.

Hot things have lots of moving particles inside them, like tiny, busy dancers jumping around. These particles bump into each other and even into your skin when you touch them, making you feel warm.

Cold things have slower-moving particles, more like sleepy people taking slow steps. They don’t give off as much heat energy, so you feel cool or even freezing if it’s ice!

If you put a hot pan on the stove and then put a cold bowl in the fridge, the hot pan has more heat than the cold bowl. So, the hot pan is hotter.

It’s like comparing your favorite playground swing (which goes really high) to a slow-moving seesaw, one feels more exciting because it moves faster!