the.com/electric potential
The energetic gossip every charge hears before deciding whether to move.
means The amount of electric potential energy a unit of charge would have at a given point in a field — essentially the 'pressure' that determines which way current will flow.
from From Latin 'potentia' meaning power or capability — the same root behind 'potent' and 'potential' in everyday English. 'Electric' traces back to Greek 'elektron,' meaning amber, because ancient Greeks noticed that rubbed amber attracted light objects. Scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries, developing the mathematics of electricity and magnetism, borrowed 'potential' from mechanics (where it already described stored, positional energy) to name this analogous electrical quantity — the latent capacity a charge has to do work simply by virtue of where it sits in a field.
- not energy itself
- it is energy per unit charge, a rate not a total
- unit
- measured in volts, one joule per coulomb
- only differences matter
- absolute potential is meaningless, only drops count
- birds on wires
- safe because both feet share the same potential