Thanks to Thomson, temperature can be seen as a fundamental property of any object, just like its mass. Different objects, whether a fried egg or a nugget of gold or a volume of air, all weigh a certain number of kilograms, irrespective of what they consist of. The Kelvin scale permits a similar claim for their temperature. Just as with mass, physicists can investigate the behavior and effects of temperature with mathematical equations confident that its definition is not contingent on the arbitrary properties of a substance. We can even speak of black holes having temperature.
