Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
e. In physics, potential energy is the energy held by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, its electric charge, or other factors. [1][2] The term potential energy was introduced by the 19th-century Scottish engineer and physicist William Rankine, [3][4][5] although it has links to the ancient ...
Gravitational energy or gravitational potential energy is the potential energy a massive object has due to its position in a gravitational field. It is the mechanical work done by the gravitational force to bring the mass from a chosen reference point (often an "infinite distance" from the mass generating the field) to some other point in the ...
The electric potential energy of a system of point charges is defined as the work required to assemble this system of charges by bringing them close together, as in the system from an infinite distance. Alternatively, the electric potential energy of any given charge or system of charges is termed as the total work done by an external agent in ...
e. Electric potential (also called the electric field potential, potential drop, the electrostatic potential) is defined as the amount of work / energy needed per unit of electric charge to move the charge from a reference point to a specific point in an electric field. More precisely, the electric potential is the energy per unit charge for a ...
The chemical potential of a species in a mixture is defined as the rate of change of free energy of a thermodynamic system with respect to the change in the number of atoms or molecules of the species that are added to the system. Thus, it is the partial derivative of the free energy with respect to the amount of the species, all other species ...
Gravitational potential. In classical mechanics, the gravitational potential is a scalar potential associating with each point in space the work (energy transferred) per unit mass that would be needed to move an object to that point from a fixed reference point in the conservative gravitational field. It is analogous to the electric potential ...
A potential energy surface (PES) or energy landscape describes the energy of a system, especially a collection of atoms, in terms of certain parameters, normally the positions of the atoms. The surface might define the energy as a function of one or more coordinates; if there is only one coordinate, the surface is called a potential energy ...
Water potential is the potential energy of water per unit volume relative to pure water in reference conditions. Water potential quantifies the tendency of water to move from one area to another due to osmosis, gravity, mechanical pressure and matrix effects such as capillary action (which is caused by surface tension).