Nothing behaves fundamentally differently when scale changes.
One can think of most forms of energy as simple momentum. So a "cold" atom with the right velocity will have the same effect as a hot atom, all its electrons nicely excited, bumping in to a thermometer.
If comparing heat to anything electrons do seems odd, consider this. All electrical conductor are also good thermal conductors. Why? Electrons are mobile in a conductor, and can carry their energy with them. The most mobile tend to be the most energetic, so heat travels with the current, including the random current of free electrons.
Atoms with energized electrons can pop out a photon, but all that's necessary to create that energized state is bumping in to its neighboring molecule with enough velocity.
The scale changes by many orders of magnitude, but the behavior is just mechanics and forces.
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Aren't some behaviors only there at atomic "sizes"?
Well there is linear motion, which is dependent on frame of reference. And there is rotational movement, such as spinning molecules, or spinning electrons. You can add energy to an electron, change its "orbit", but add too much and it leaves its atom behind.
Consider if we want to make levitating cars. One way, possibly the worst idea ever written, but possible to actually do is this. Shoot electrons into space with sufficient speed they cannot come back. Do that long enough, the world and everything on it builds a positive electric charge. Do that enough, at some point stuff starts levitating off the ground to balance the electric and gravity force. We can't walk, because our feet don't touch the ground, but probably before that the air stopped coming near us so we are not bothered by breathing. Point being, nothing is happening at the small scale that could not happen at the large scale. We don't see it because electric fields tend to be neutralized by paired off electrons and protons.
Lots of recent astronomical "Science" has invented "dark matter" and "dark energy" to explain movement we believe to be happening to galaxies. We need "dark matter", something massive, which does not stick together, and does not interact with light, and only weakly interacts with other things. Some particle "Neutral" in nature but massive, in other words, something exactly like a Neutron, but we don't get grant money for calling it that. Now we need a Negative force that pushes things apart. (Read last paragraph). For some reason we call negative forces dark energy, possibly its good for grants to have "dark" in the title, but couldn't they have called it dark force? Equally "impossible" to explain with what we know, especially since its even harder difficult to get grant money to explore the idea that galaxies might actually have a net charge. The electric force is the only known force to "repel" (including magnetism).
Its a lot more romantic to imagine we have discovered un-testable, un-provable new building blocks of the universe, than to see if the Lego's we already know could build the same thing we see in the telescopes.
Forces and Mechanics work on every scale, they just may be present in different quantities. But from Electrons to Galaxies, its all just motion and force.
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