Abstract

A temperature relationship derived from special relativity is determined by examining the kinematics of particle motion in two translating reference frames. The relationship is derived for a high temperature region in which the absolute temperature is large compared with the energy level spacing. The model, for finite mass particles, leads to an expression more complex than the popular Planck (b = −1), Landsberg (b = 0), and Ott (b = 1) temperature relationships, which relate the temperatures according to the power law T(v) = [Y(v)]bT(0). The high temperature relationship leads to a result which suggests that a moving body appears to cool. The degree of cooling depends on the form assumed for the equipartition theorem.