What is Potential: Definition and 1000 Discussions

Potential generally refers to a currently unrealized ability. The term is used in a wide variety of fields, from physics to the social sciences to indicate things that are in a state where they are able to change in ways ranging from the simple release of energy by objects to the realization of abilities in people. The philosopher Aristotle incorporated this concept into his theory of potentiality and actuality, a pair of closely connected principles which he used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his aPhysics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics and De Anima, which is about the human psyche. That which is potential can theoretically be made actual by taking the right action; for example, a boulder on the edge of a cliff has potential to fall that could be actualized by pushing it over the edge. Several languages have a potential mood, a grammatical construction that indicates that something is potential. These include Finnish, Japanese, and Sanskrit.In physics, a potential may refer to the scalar potential or to the vector potential. In either case, it is a field defined in space, from which many important physical properties may be derived. Leading examples are the gravitational potential and the electric potential, from which the motion of gravitating or electrically charged bodies may be obtained. Specific forces have associated potentials, including the Coulomb potential, the van der Waals potential, the Lennard-Jones potential and the Yukawa potential. In electrochemistry there are Galvani potential, Volta potential, electrode potential, and standard electrode potential. In the
thermodynamics, the term potential often refers to thermodynamic potential.

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  1. H

    I Force of an Electron on a Potential Wall?

    I've been looking at a practice test for an introductory class in quantum physics, and I've found a really weird question. It asks for an estimation of the force that an electron exerts on the walls of a box of known length during a collision. This seems like an entirely nonsense thing to ask...
  2. AntonioJ

    Potential associated with a conservative force field F

    Given the potential energy, the force is obtained as F = -∇U(r). A conservative force field F is associated with a potential f by F = ∇f. Does the first expression arise from this last one? If so, with -∇U(r), would one obtain the electric field E instead of the force F?
  3. deuteron

    Motion in a Central Potential

    This question is from Collection of Problems in Classical Mechanics by Kotkin & Serbo, here, the answer is given as the following: However, the graph of ##-Ax^4## looks like: so shouldn't the trajectory be just ##x(t)=0##?
  4. G

    Particle moving from one potential to another

    Attaching the image of the problem as an image. Somehow text is not copied from the book. Somehow, I can't imagine the picture in my head. We can do it in 2D plane. I know, it mentions the solution, but need to see the drawing, otherwise, my logic fails. I thought that maybe, first half space...
  5. L

    Question about the integral used to calculate the voltage between two points

    ^^
  6. PhysicsTest

    Understanding of Voltage potential

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  7. ab200

    Potential of Charges on a Grid

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  8. V

    Potential difference between 2 points in a capacitor circuit

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  9. T

    I Callan-Symanzik equation for Effective Potential

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  10. Grelbr42

    I Unlocking the Potential of Back-to-Back Photons: an Experiment

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  11. milkism

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  12. S

    Experiment about diode related to temperature and potential difference

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  13. yucheng

    I Electric potential and potential difference

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  14. E

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  15. S

    I Potential energy of spin anti-alignment

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  16. Z

    MIT OCW, 8.02 Electromagnetism: Potential for an Electric Dipole

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  17. S

    A Moire potential depth from continuum model

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  18. jerry222

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  19. S

    Rate of loss of potential energy

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  20. haziq

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  21. Darmstadtium

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    • Darmstadtium
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  22. K

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  23. C

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  24. Muu9

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  25. Jake357

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  26. Jake357

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  27. G

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  28. homeworkhelpls

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  29. PhysicsRock

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  30. C

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  31. somasimple

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  32. M

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  33. sinus

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  35. C

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  36. J

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  37. N

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  38. C

    Graphing electric potential for two positive charges

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  39. Superposed_Cat

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  40. loversphisics

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  41. S

    Why is the elastic potential energy in position 2 zero?

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  42. P

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  43. mathbrain9

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  44. P

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  45. josevie

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  46. sinna

    Distance between two ions

  47. G

    Calculate chemical potential

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  48. Addez123

    Can't find potential of vector field

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  49. ermia

    Finding Constants: Potential and Field Analysis

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  50. M

    A Normalization of Morse potential wavefunctions

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