# What's the Relation between Potential of mechanics and electricity?

As we know that for a conservative force field, there is associated a Potential with the force. But we know there is a potential in electricity (That's voltage). My question is that is there any relation between this potential with the 'potential' associated with conservative force? Is yes? How and where is the conservative force in electricity? If no? Why then we term it as potential? I'm sorry if my question is too silly. :P

• Potential is just potential energy per unit charge (where 'charge' is mass in the case of gravity). It can be defined for any force field irrespective of whether it's conservative. Look up Maxwell's equations: the electric and magnetic fields are not conservative in the general case of electrodynamics (since the curls are non-zero), but they are conservative under conditions of electrostatics. – lemon Feb 21 '15 at 15:44

The electrostatic potential is a potential just like any other mechanical potential. Since the force on a particle with charge $q$ is $\vec F_\text{stat} = q\vec E$, the potential $\phi'$ that gives the force as $\vec F_\text{stat} = - \vec \nabla \phi'$ is just the electrostatic potential (the "voltage") times $-q$. The electrostatic force is a perfectly ordinary conservative force.