High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Thermal energy is the part of the total potential energy and kinetic energy of an object or sample of matter that results in the system temperature. This quantity may be difficult to determine or even meaningless unless the system has attained its temperature only through cooling, and not been subjected to work input or output, or any other energy-changing processes. The internal energy of a system, also often called the thermodynamic energy, includes other forms of energy in a thermodynamic system in addition to thermal energy, namely forms of potential energy that do not influence temperature, such as the chemical energy stored in its molecular structure and electronic configuration, intermolecular interactions associated with phase changes that do not influence temperature (i.e., latent energy), and the nuclear binding energy that binds the sub-atomic particles of matter.