which has a higher temperature and which contains a larger amount of kinetic energy a cup of?

Question

boiling water or lake michigan and why

Answer 1

boiling water has a higher temperature, since lake michigan doesn't boil, boiling is at 212 degrees F and it also has more kinetic energy because the molecules are moving rapidly throughout the liquid. The hotter the liquid, the faster they're moving.

Answer 2

The boiling water has a higher temperature, because temperature is the average kinetic energy of all molecules, but lake michigan contains more kinetic energy, because it has a much greater amount of molecules.

Answer 3

Well since the particles in the lake are so many, even though any one particle has less KE (=1/2mv^2), the sum total f all particles moving around is much much greater, so the answer at an atomic level is lake michigan.