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There are various types of potential energy, each associated with a particular type of force. For example, the work of an elastic force is called elastic potential energy; work of the gravitational force is called gravitational potential energy; work of the Coulomb force is called electric potential energy; work of the strong nuclear force or weak nuclear force acting on the baryon charge is ...
This is a list of potential energy functions that are frequently used in quantum mechanics and have any meaning. One-dimensional potentials
The electric potential at any point is defined as the energy required to bring a unit test charge from an infinite distance slowly to that point. It is usually measured in volts , and one volt is the potential for which one joule of work must be expended to bring a charge of one coulomb from infinity.
For two pairwise interacting point particles, the gravitational potential energy is the work that an outside agent must do in order to quasi-statically bring the masses together (which is therefore, exactly opposite the work done by the gravitational field on the masses): = = where is the displacement vector of the mass, is gravitational force acting on it and denotes scalar product.
The potential has units of energy per mass, e.g., J/kg in the MKS system. By convention, it is always negative where it is defined, and as x tends to infinity, it approaches zero. The gravitational field, and thus the acceleration of a small body in the space around the massive object, is the negative gradient of the gravitational potential ...
The electrostatic potential energy U E stored in a system of two charges is equal to the electrostatic potential energy of a charge in the electrostatic potential generated by the other. That is to say, if charge q 1 generates an electrostatic potential V 1 , which is a function of position r , then U E = q 2 V 1 ( r 2 ) . {\displaystyle U ...
A thermodynamic potential (or more accurately, a thermodynamic potential energy) [1] [2] is a scalar quantity used to represent the thermodynamic state of a system. Just as in mechanics , where potential energy is defined as capacity to do work, similarly different potentials have different meanings.
Energy may be released from a potential well if sufficient energy is added to the system such that the local maximum is surmounted. In quantum physics, potential energy may escape a potential well without added energy due to the probabilistic characteristics of quantum particles; in these cases a particle may be imagined to tunnel through the walls of a potential well.