The point has already been made that we are not very sensitive to thermal energy. The extra energy needed to make your house warm on a winter day would be enough to throw it a mile in the air (something the gas company strives to prevent). It is a very large amount of energy and we barely notice it. A concept like conservation of energy isn't going to mean anything if we are going to ignore the largest part of the energy budget!

There are many occasions in the kitchen when it is useful and practical to know how thermal energy and temperature are related:

• It doesn't take very long to warm up a cup of soup in the microwave, but it will take a lot longer to heat up soup for a whole Cub Scout den. It takes more energy to make more stuff hot. For the same reason, a large pot of soup will stay hot longer than a single cupful.
• If you roast a small chicken and leave it on the counter while you finish making the potatoes and vegetables, it can cool off before you get around to carving it. Yet if you roast a large turkey at the same temperature and leave it on the counter, it stays steamy hot much longer. Even though the chicken and turkey are at the same temperature, there is much more of the turkey, and therefore it has more thermal energy.

Here are some quesions that we will understand after we have studied how temperature and energy are related:

This car was parked long before sundown, and then left out all night. The next morning, it is all covered with frost. Why is there a disturbance in the ice crystal pattern right over the engine?

Every bridge in the state of North Carolina has a sign like this. Why does the bridge ice first?
The unit on the relationship between energy and temperature.