Chronology | Current Month | Current Thread | Current Date |
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] | [Date Index] [Thread Index] | [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] | [Date Prev] [Date Next] |
. . .
I would like, however, to weigh in on the slippery concept of
potential energy due to the work done "on" a system by "a"
conservative force. Potential energy is a property *of* a system
and, must properly be considered as an *internal* energy that
arises from *pairs of internal* forces, NOT *single external*
forces.
All forces are "half interactions" and we should really speak of
the potential energy due to conservative "interactions." In the
cases of the gravitational and electrostatic interactions between
point particles, the interaction generally does work on *both*
particles and it is the sum of those works that depends only on
the initial and final separations of the particles. We designate
the interaction "conservative" as a result of this fact, and
assign a potential energy to the interaction. That energy belongs
to the system consisting of *both* particles and can not sensibly
be allocated between them.
. . .
John