Noun

Wikipedia

Singular potential

Plural potentials

potential (plural potentials)

1. Currently unfulfilled capacity to improve, develop, and achieve impressive feats.

   Even from a young age it was clear that she had great musical potential.

2. Anything that may be possible; a possibility; potentiality.
3. (physics) In the theory of gravitation, or of other forces acting in space, a function of the rectangular coordinates which determine the position of a point, such that its differential coefficients with respect to the coordinates are equal to the components of the force at the point considered; -- also called potential function, or force function. It is called also Newtonian potential when the force is directed to a fixed center and is inversely as the square of the distance from the center.
4. (physics) The energy of an electrical charge measured by its power to do work; hence, the degree of electrification as referred to some standard, as that of the earth; electro-motive force.
5. (grammar) A verbal construction or form stating something is possible or probable.

Related terms

• potence
• potency
• potent
• potentate
• potentiality

• The mathematical study of potentials is known as potential theory; it is the study of harmonic functions on manifolds. This mathematical formulation arises from the fact that, in physics, the scalar potential is irrotational, and thus has a vanishing Laplacian — the very definition of a harmonic function.
• In physics, a potential may refer to the scalar potential or to the vector potential. In either case, it is a field defined in space, from which many important physical properties may be derived.
  • Leading examples are the gravitational potential and the electric potential, from which the motion of gravitating or electrically charged bodies may be obtained.
  • Specific forces have associated potentials, including the Coulomb potential, the van der Waals potential, the Lennard-Jones potential and the Yukawa potential.
  • In electrochemistry there are Galvani potential and Volta potential.