Today I was talking about electric potential. My favorite analogy for electric potential energy is gravitational potential energy. But electric potential is something different. Electric potential (commonly called potential) can be defined as:
So, V is the electric potential in units of Joules per Coulomb or Volts.
What about gravitational potential? I am sure some astrophysicist use gravitational potential. Maybe they even have some units for it, but I have never seen it. My students asked me if there was such a thing as gravitational potential. I said, sure. Here it is:
I picked the letter Y, why? Why not? The units for gravitational potential would be Joules per kilogram. I think this should be called the "golt".
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Pre Reqs: Electric Field, Work-Energy,
Pre Reqs: electric potential, electric field,
Yesterday we dumped a bucket of electrons on the Statue of Liberty and watched what happened.
All right, time for an actual example of this gravitational force law I've been ruminating on for the last two days. Today we'll look at an alternate version of the gravitational potential that's truly screwy: