2

I been thinking if temperature is a basic property of macroscopic objects rather than of quantum or microscopic objects and it is as a result of average kinetic energy of particles residing in the object either through movement of vibration.

That being said, its also described similarly in Wikipedia thus I'm sure it is a good description of temperature however this is the only description I'll use for this question but there are way more descriptions of temperature.

That however is similar to sound which is also as a result of vibration in an medium which will result in transfer due to vibrations and movement of particles being oscillated through the medium which will transfer the energy across.

That being said cant we detect a temperature just by hearing it using a detector but obviously we have to know its vital information like density of the medium and density of the material and such but not the temperature of the object

Can this be possible?

I'm in middle school so please excuse my lack of scientific knowledge therefore if any descriptions are mathematical please explain it.

2 Answers2

4

Have a look at this black body radiation spectrum, which is approximately the spectrum of "light", electromagnetic radiation, that a body radiates because of the intrinsic kinetic degrees of freedom of the molecules.

black body

Look at the frequency spectrum for 300K, about room temperature. Acoustic frequencies are of the order of a few thousand Hertz, infrared is orders of magnitude more variable per second than sound.

Sound is vibrations by collective lattices/volumes composed of order of 10^23 molecules, which when vibrating mechanically, altogether, displace the air molecules and transfer the vibrations to the air that we hear as sound.

So it is possible to measure temperature of matter by the electromagnetic radiation it radiates at that temperature, but sound has no one-to-one connection with this radiation.

Brandon Enright
  • 12,030
anna v
  • 236,935
3

This page gives a chart of Young's modulus over temperature for various metals. Taking the top line of the table, the modulus drops from 31.4 Msi at -325F (-200C) to 24.2 Msi at 800F (427C). Due to thermal expansion, you will have more square inches. Using a linear expansion of $12E-6 K^{-1}$ the area of a bar will increase $1.5\%$ The longitudinal frequency will then drop from $1$ to $\sqrt{\frac {24.2}{31.4}\cdot 1.015} \approx 0.88$ over that range. It isn't very sensitive, but you can get some indication.

Ross Millikan
  • 8,663