Home » Ask & Discuss » Chemistry. » Organic Chemistry « Back to Discussion
Organic Chemistry
Comments (6)
Potential Energy
Potential energy is energy which results from position or configuration. An object may have the capacity for doing work as a result of its position in a gravitational field (gravitational potential energy), an electric field (electric potential energy), or a magnetic field (magnetic potential energy). It may have elastic potential energy as a result of a stretched spring or other elastic deformation.

Potential Energy Concept
| The potential energy U is equal to the work you must do to move an object from the U=0 reference point to the position r. The reference point at which you assign the value U=0 is arbitrary, so may be chosen for convenience, like choosing the origin of a coordinate system. The force on an object is the negative of the derivative of the potential function U. This means it is the negative of the slope of the potential energy curve. Plots of potential functions are valuable aids to visualizing the change of the force in a given region of space. |















Potential energy exists whenever an object which has mass has a position within a force field. The most everyday example of this is the position of objects in the earth's gravitational field.
The potential energy of an object in this case is given by the relation:
PE = mgh
Stretched String Gains Potential Energy