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Thermal energy and heat are the same thing to a scientist, maybe not to the man in the street. All substances on earth contain thermal energy (or heat energy). It comes from the vibrations of the atoms and molecules. Scientists have worked out that to stop the vibrations we'd have to cool things down to about -273oC. And we haven't quite got that cold yet.

So, while a writer might say something like, "All the heat had left my toes and I was freezing cold." a scientist would say, "I'd lost some heat energy from my toes to the environment as the heat energy tried to reach equilibrium. I felt cold because my toes were radiating heat faster than I could generate it and the heat energy left in them was not enough to keep me comfortable." Which possibly explains why scientists don't write the best fiction!

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15y ago

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