what is the measure of average kinetic energy
It is at this point that we can use a more sophisticated definition of temperature. Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles within a sample of matter. In a previous unit of The Physics Classroom Tutorial, kinetic energy was defined as the energy of motion. An object ... or a particle ... that is moving has kinetic energy. There are three common forms of kinetic energy - vibrational kinetic energy, rotational kinetic energy and translational kinetic energy. Up to this point of the Tutorial, we have associated kinetic energy with the movement of an object (or particle) from one location to another.