When people first began measuring temperature in numbers, what led them to associate hotter temperatures with higher numbers, and colder temperatures with lower ones?
by 
Mr. Meaulnes
ANSWERS: 3
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common sense
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Because mercury in a thermomiter (or outside of a thermomiter for that matter) expands in heat, thus having a higher volume. Also hot things have more energy.
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Very good question, Temperature as we know it today comes from the Fahrenheit scale. This was proposed in 1724 by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. The diffrence between the freezing and boiling points of water is 180 degrees, this was, I believe due to 180 the angle at any given point on a flat line. Higher temp is a higher number purly because of the word higher. It was a choice by the man himself. A few years later a french physisist come up with the Celcius scale where 0 was freezing water and 100 was boiling. This scale makes much more sense than the Fahrenheit scale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit
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