Electric Potential

Newton’s law of gravity and Coulomb’s law of electrostatics are mathematically identical. Therefore, the general features of the gravitational force introduced in Chap. 6 apply to electrostatic forces. In particular, electrostatic forces are conservative. Consequently, it is more convenient to assign an electric potential energy U to describe any system of two or more charged particles. This idea allows us to define a scalar quantity known as the electric potential. It turns out that this concept is of great practical value when dealing with devices such as capacitors, resistors, inductors, batteries, etc, and when dealing with the flow of currents in electric circuits.