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The kinetic theory explains temperature as the collective effect of the motion of many particles. Usually these collective effects are only observed as the average behavior of millions of billions of particles, which all share a common pool of energy. Each particle can have a random amount of energy from the pool, but one particle that uses a lot of energy, would leave less energy for the rest of the particles. Therefore, the energy distribution in thermal equilibrium at temperature T is an exponential distribution. This means that very few particles have a large amount of kinetic energy, but no matter how high the energy or how low the temperature, the population is never quite zero. This experiment has been carried out using a novel detector comprised of a large array of silicon avalanche photodiodes known as a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM). It stores a large amount of energy and releases it if there is a slight disturbance. From time to time, an electron would have enough energy to set off the silicon photomultiplier from the randomness of the thermal energy distribution. This mechanism reacts to the energy of a single electron, allowing us to detect the thermal energies of a single particle.  

The kinetic theory explains temperature as the collective effect of the motion of many particles. Usually these collective effects are only observed as the average behavior of millions of billions of particles, which all share a common pool of energy. Each particle can have a random amount of energy from the pool, but one particle that uses a lot of energy, would leave less energy for the rest of the particles. Therefore, the energy distribution in thermal equilibrium at temperature T is an exponential distribution. This means that very few particles have a large amount of kinetic energy, but no matter how high the energy or how low the temperature, the population is never quite zero. This experiment has been carried out using a novel detector comprised of a large array of silicon avalanche photodiodes known as a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM). It stores a large amount of energy and releases it if there is a slight disturbance. From time to time, an electron would have enough energy to set off the silicon photomultiplier from the randomness of the thermal energy distribution. This mechanism reacts to the energy of a single electron, allowing us to detect the thermal energies of a single particle.  

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