What is temperature?

Temperature is how hot or cold something feels.

Imagine you're holding two cups, one full of hot chocolate, and the other with cold water. The hot chocolate feels warm in your hands, while the cold water makes your fingers tingle. That’s because temperature tells us how much energy is moving inside a substance.

Think of molecules like little bouncy balls, they’re always moving around. In something that's hot, those balls are zooming around really fast, bumping into each other. In something that's cold, the balls move slowly, almost like they're taking a nap.

So when you touch something hot, it feels warm because all those fast-moving molecules are passing their energy to your skin. And when you touch something cold, your skin loses some of its energy to the slow-moving molecules, making you feel chilly!

People use thermometers to check temperature. They work like a special kind of ruler for heat, the more energy is moving inside something, the higher the number on the thermometer goes!