The Boltzmann constant provides a mapping from the characteristic microscopic energy  to the macroscopic temperature scale . In fundamental physics, this mapping is often simplified by using the natural units of setting  to unity. This convention means that temperature and energy quantities have the same dimensions. In particular, the SI unit kelvin becomes superfluous, being defined in terms of joules as . With this convention, temperature is always given in units of energy, and the Boltzmann constant is not explicitly needed in formulas.
This convention simplifies many physical relationships and formulas. For example, the equipartition formula for the energy associated with each classical degree of freedom ( above) becomes
As another example, the definition of thermodynamic entropy coincides with the form of information entropy:
where  is the probability of each microstate.