Why is temperature, a measure of coldness or hotness, considered a macroscopic measure or description of the microscopic behavior of an object? Hint: molecules or atoms

Question

chenping · Answer

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_a_temperature_considered_microscopic_or_macroscopic according to wikianswers, temperature is considered microscopic >.< sry cant help haha :D

festinger · Answer

temperature, the degree of hotness or coldness, is actually a measure of the average microscopic kinetic energy.

I certainly won't call anyone in the plane hot because they are travelling (macroscopic) fast.

anonymous · Answer

im asking WHY

ghazi · Answer

simply, you can not measure the temperature of atom or molecule , you measure the average temperature of a body that is made up of atoms and molecule and with respect to that (level of atom and molecule) indeed consideration of a body is a macroscopic property . hope this helps you :)

ybarrap · Answer

It's like why GPA is used to measure performance of a student and not what grade they got in Physics I, for example. The average says something (not everything) about the underlying constituents. If you wanted a distribution of energy based on vibration, rotation, translation, etc, of individual atoms, then you would need more microscopic measures than just how much radiation the object emits (i.e. heat). This would be equivalent to knowing your grade in Physics and even how much sleep you got and where you sat in the classroom, etc. 

So as to WHY would be because its a simple measure of average internal energy and sufficient for most applications.