vessenes parent
Jusssst had this conversation two nights ago with a smart drunk friend. To his credit when I asked "what's heat?" and he said "molecules moving fast" and I said "how many molecules are there in space to bump against?" He immediately got it. I'm always curious what ideas someone that isn't familiar with a problem space comes up with for solutions, so I canvased him for thoughts -- nothing novel, unfortunately, but if we get another 100 million people thinking about it, who knows what we'll come up with?
I got really annoyed when I first realized that heat and sound (and kinetic energy) are both "molecules moving," because they behave so dramatically differently on a human scale.
And yes, obviously they aren't moving in the same way, but it's still kind of weird to think about.