Review of Potential Energy and Force

• There is a potential energy associated with every conservative force;
  • One may integrate the force with displacement to find the change in potential energy ....
  • or differentiate the potential energy with respect to position to find the force
• Electric potential may be defined several ways:
  • the negative of the integral of electric field dotted with displacement
  • the scalar field of which the electric field is the negative derivative
  • the electric potential energy per unit charge at a particular point in space
  • some quantity one measures in a circuit with a voltmeter
• the units of electric potential are volts = (newton-meter/coulomb)

You may find the Potential fill-in-the-blank game helpful.

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Copyright © Michael Richmond. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.