Temperature definitions

Quick couple of thoughts on temperature and sorry to post this so late:

The definition I meant to write in class is this: Temperature is a measure of the tendency of an object to spontaneously* give up energy to its surroundings. When two objects are in thermal contact, the one that tends to lose energy is at the higher temperature.

*spontaneous in this case simply means that it happens by itself without any outside forces.

The definitions of heat as transferred energy and temperature as kinetic energy seem almost as if they're designed to confuse rather than help. Temperature is not a measure of kinetic energy in a substance as the book almost implies and the transitional kinetic energy concept is confusing. We'll go over what the book says in more detail in class tomorrow.

Another issue I have with that definition is that, for us, it's practically unknowable and for the purpose of your lab write ups I'm more interested in you being able to draw conclusions from what you observe without outside knowledge.