Heat and temperature are related, but they are not the same thing. Heat is a form of energy called thermal energy. Objects are composed of molecules, which move around. When molecules gain energy, they move even more. Every object on Earth has thermal energy. That’s because even the molecules inside very cold objects are not perfectly still.
Temperature is a measure of the intensity of an object’s thermal energy. It tells us the average amount of thermal energy an object has. This is why a small hot object can have a higher temperature but less thermal energy than a large cold object.
Based on the passage, an object with a lot of thermal energy
A
might be cold but very small.
B
might be cold but very large.
C
is always large.
D
is always small.