Rhett Allain is an Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University. He
enjoys teaching and talking about physics. Sometimes he takes things apart and can't
put them back together.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".
Physical Science
