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How is energy "stored in an electric field"?

This question is deeper than you might expect. Neither energy nor an electric field is exactly what you might expect. First, physics is a description of the behavior of the universe. It is not the ...
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How is energy "stored in an electric field"?

The idea is that all energy, including kinetic energy and EM energy (such as that stored in the capacitor) is localized in space, i.e. given any region of space, one can assign net energy to it, and ...
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How is energy "stored in an electric field"?

It's a model, created to capture what is seen in experiments. If we attribute the energy of an electromagnetic interaction to the fields, we get the right answer. We don't have an alternative that ...
• 4,156
Accepted

How is energy "stored in an electric field"?

What "is" an electric field? One way to look at the world is to see it as a cellular automaton; something resembling Conway's game of life. Of course it's not so simple — the playing field ...

How is energy "stored in an electric field"?

Very incorrect and oversimplified but somehow intuitive: Nature tries to "equalize" many "things". For example temperature. Water in every place within a bucket will eventually be ...
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1 vote

Why we say that total energy should be zero at infinity in the derivation of escape velocity?

The gravitational force is $F=-\dfrac{GMm}{r^2}$ which goes to zero as $r\to\infty$. As $r$ increases, the gravitational force decreases and eventially, at infinity, dies off. Remember that the force ...
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1 vote

Potential energy in Special Relativity

In special relativity, the equation of motion in Galilean coordinates are: \frac{\text{d}\boldsymbol{p}}{\text{d}t} - \boldsymbol{F} = \frac{\text{d}}{\text{d}t}\left(\frac{m\boldsymbol{v}}{\sqrt{1-...
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1 vote

How we will choose reference point for more than two particle system to calculate potential energy as in the case of of equilateral triangle?

The point of the potential energy is that its difference gives you work and thus it is determined up to an additive constant. You can use any constant whatsoever, but for certain problems some choices ...
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1 vote
Accepted

If an object just spontaneously appeared, would it have gravitational potential energy?

Yes. Gravitational potential does not require a change in position, it requires a hypothetical change in position. Wikipedia defines gravitational potential as the energy "that would be needed to ...
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