Potential Energy
Main article: Potential energyInstead of a force, often the mathematically related concept of a potential energy field can be used for convenience. For instance, the gravitational force acting upon an object can be seen as the action of the gravitational field that is present at the object's location. Restating mathematically the definition of energy (via the definition of work), a potential scalar field is defined as that field whose gradient is equal and opposite to the force produced at every point:
Forces can be classified as conservative or nonconservative. Conservative forces are equivalent to the gradient of a potential while nonconservative forces are not.
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Other articles related to "potential, energy, potential energy":
... Atoms moving through the potential landscape created by the standing wave (created by the interference of the two counter-propagating beams) lose kinetic energy as ... Repeated cycles of converting kinetic energy to potential energy, then losing potential energy via optical pumping allow the atoms to reach temperatures orders ...
... Wave energy is a quantity of primary interest, since it is a primary quantity that is transported with the wave trains ... In water waves, the most used energy measure is the mean wave energy density per unit horizontal area ... It is the sum of the kinetic and potential energy density, integrated over the depth of the fluid layer and averaged over the wave phase ...
... Stream power is the rate of energy dissipation against the bed and banks of a river or stream per unit downstream length ... good assumptions for an averaged reach of a stream over a modest distance), all of the potential energy lost as the water flows downstream must be used up in ... Therefore, the potential energy drop is equal to the work done to the bed and banks, which is the stream power ...
... Signorini in Signorini 1959 is the analysis of the potential energy, i.e ... meaning of each of the three terms is the following the first one is the total elastic potential energy of the elastic body the second one is the total ...
... Potential energy is closely linked with forces ... and it is possible to define a numerical value of potential associated with every point in space ... by taking the negative of the vector gradient of the potential field ...
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