Question

What is electrical potential? How is it related to electric potential energy? How is it related to electric field? How can you calculate the electrical potential?

Answer 1

electrical potential

An electric potential (also called the electric field potential or the electrostatic potential) is the amount of electric potential energy that a unitary point electric charge would have if located at any point of space, and is equal to the work done by an electric field in carrying a unit positive charge from infinity to that point.

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According to theoretical electromagnetics, electric potential is a scalar quantity denoted by (Phi), phi_E or V, equal to the electric potential energy of any charged particle at any location (measured in joules) divided by the charge of that particle (measured in coulombs).

By dividing out the charge on the particle a remainder is obtained that is a property of the electric field itself.

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Electric potential and field are related in that potential is a property of the field that describes the field's action

The electric field is a measure of force per unit charge; the electric potential is a measure of energy per unit charge

The relationship between electric potential and field is similar to that between gravitational potential and field in that the potential is a property of the field describing the action of the field upon an object

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