why is temperature directly related to the potential energy of particles
Temperature is not directly proportional to internal energy since temperature measures only the kinetic energy part of the internal energy, so two objects with the same temperature do not in general have the same internal energy (see water-metal example).art of the idea of temperature is that for two collections of the same type of molecules that are in contact with each other, the collection with higher average kinetic energy will transfer energy to the collection with lower average kinetic energy.