ELECTRIC POTENTIAL

• When we harness electricity to power our circuits and gadgets, we are transforming energy.

• Electronic circuits must be able to store energy and transfer it to other forms like heat, light, or
motion.

• The stored energy of a circuit is called ELECTRIC POTENTIAL ENERGY.

Potential energy

-can be defined as the capacity for doing work which arises from position or configuration

Electric Potential Energy

- is the energy that charged particles such as electrons and protons have because of its own
electric charge and its relative position to other charged particles.

• A charge’s electric potential energy describes how much stored energy it has, when set into
motion by an electrostatic force, that energy can become kinetic, and the charge can do work.
 Equipotential Surfaces

• All points on an equipotential surface have the same electric potential (i.e. the same voltage).

• The electric force neither helps nor hinders motion of an electric charge along an equipotential
surface.

• Electric field lines are always perpendicular to an equipotential surface.

• Electric potential is analogous to altitude; one can make maps of each in very similar ways.

• The electric field strength can be determined by looking at the local spatial gradient of the
electric potential:

electric field = change in potential / distance

• A capacitor is a device which stores positive and negative charges in separate places.

• The capacitance of a device tells how much charge it can store for a given voltage across it:

capacitance = charge / voltage

coulumbs / volts = farads

• The energy stored in a capacitor is:

energy stored = 0.5 * (capacitance) * (voltage)^2

Electric field intensity as a potential gradient

• A potential gradient is the local rate of change of the potential with respect to displacement, i.e.
spatial derivative, or gradient.

• The electric field intensity at a point can be defined as the negative of the potential gradient at
that point. i.e.
Electric field intensity = - Potential gradient E = – dV/dx

• Notice the negative sign - this implies that measuring from the positive plate the potential drops
with increasing distance.

• In the uniform field the electric field intensity is the same anywhere in the field (hence the
name) and therefore you should see that the potential decreases steadily with distance from
one plate to the other. [dV = -Edx]

• However in a radial field E is not constant and is then truly the gradient of the potential-distance
curve at any point.
• Graph of potential gradient and electric field intensity for a radial field