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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 Greek ...
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 ...
General. Energy is a scalar quantity and the mechanical energy of a system is the sum of the potential energy (which is measured by the position of the parts of the system) and the kinetic energy (which is also called the energy of motion): [1][2] The potential energy, U, depends on the position of an object subjected to gravity or some other ...
The kinetic energy is equal to 1/2 the product of the mass and the square of the speed. In formula form: where is the mass and is the speed (magnitude of the velocity) of the body. In SI units, mass is measured in kilograms, speed in metres per second, and the resulting kinetic energy is in joules.
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 ...
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 ...
The potential virtual temperature , defined by. is the theoretical potential temperature of the dry air which would have the same density as the humid air at a standard pressure P 0. It is used as a practical substitute for density in buoyancy calculations. In this definition is the potential temperature, is the mixing ratio of water vapor, and ...
Sunlight also drives most weather phenomena, save a few exceptions, like those generated by volcanic events for example. An example of a solar-mediated weather event is a hurricane, which occurs when large unstable areas of warm ocean, heated over months, suddenly give up some of their thermal energy to power a few days of violent air movement.