Does an icy mountain or a plate of hot stew has more heat energy?

Heat energy is the energy stored in the random motion of atoms and molecules. The temperature of an object is a measure of the average kinetic energy of its atoms and molecules. The higher the temperature, the more heat energy an object has.

The icy mountain has a lower temperature than the hot stew, so it has less heat energy. The stew is also likely to be denser than the ice, meaning that it has more atoms and molecules packed into the same volume. This means that the stew has more total heat energy, even though the individual atoms and molecules may not be moving as quickly as those in the ice.