Electric potential is defined as the amount of potential energy per charge. Watch this next video and see if you can quickly determine the work done on the charge and where the electric potential is the greatest…
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So to put it all together (because now we’re about to make a big leap): what we’ve figured out so far is that if you have a charge that has a large amount of electric potential energy in a specific location, that location has a high potential. (And the opposite is also true for low potential.) This means you can have an electric potential difference between two locations. And that’s what drives the entire electric industry. That’s exactly why we have computers, power lines, cell phones, and lights… and so much more!
The electric potential difference is written like this: ΔV (“delta” V), and it’s the difference between the final and initial locations when you do work on a charge to move it (and thus change its potential energy). The electric potential difference is work per unit charge, or the change in potential energy per unit charge.
where V is the electric potential, and Wfi is the work done by the electric field on the positive test charge as it moves from point i to f (so this can be positive, negative, or zero). The units are a “Joule per Coulomb”, which is defined to be 1 Volt.
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