Energy correlators that describe energy-weighted distances between two or three particles in a hadronic jet are measured using an event sample of √𝑠=13 TeV proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.3 fb−1. The measured distributions are consistent with the trends in the simulation that reveal two key features of the strong interaction: confinement and asymptotic freedom. By comparing the ratio of the measured three- and two-particle energy correlator distributions with theoretical calculations that resum collinear emissions at approximate next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy matched to a next-to-leading-order calculation, the strong coupling is determined at the 𝑍 boson mass: 𝛼𝑆(𝑚𝑍)=0.1229+0.0040 −0.0050, the most precise 𝛼𝑆(𝑚𝑍) value obtained using jet substructure observables.