The Meaning of the Temperature

While the concept of temperature is routinely used in daily life, its meaning is very confusing for the vast majority of ordinary humans. The main reason of this study is to provide a discussion about this concept in order to try to clarify its meaning. In most of the high school and college courses handled this concept saying that the temperature is a fraction of the average kinetic energy of the molecules that make up the body. Using this definition of temperature, a thermometer should then measuring the kinetic energy of the system under study, which does not. Then present a discussion about the meaning of temperature, analyzing which is the operating principle of some thermometers, leading the discussion in terms of the balance between two systems and we see that the interpretation of temperature as a fraction of the average kinetic energy, is an interpretation only at this level.