Scale of temperature is a way to measure temperature quantitatively.

According to the zeroth law of thermodynamics, being in thermal equilibrium is an equivalence relation. Thus all thermal systems may be divided into a quotient set by this equivalence relation, denoted below as M. Assume the set M has the cardinality of c, then one can construct an injective function ƒ: M → R , by which every thermal system will have a number associated with it such that when and only when two thermal systems have the same such value, they will be in thermal equilibrium. This is clearly the property of temperature, and the specific way of assigning numerical values as temperature is called a scale of temperature. In practical terms, a temperature scale is always based on usually a single physical property of a simple thermodynamic system, called a thermometer, that defines a scaling function mapping the temperature to the measurable thermometric parameter. Such temperature scales that are purely based on measurement are called empirical temperature scales.