Potential Energy Calculator

Calculate the potential energy of an object with the help of Totu Calculator's potential energy calculator.

Required Information

Mass:

Gravitational Acceleration:

Height:

Potential Energy:

What it is

Understanding Potential Energy

Create Date: June 29, 2024

Last Modified Date: December 6, 2024

Potential energy is the energy possessed by an object due to its position relative to other objects or its state. This form of energy has the potential to do work, which becomes kinetic energy when the object begins to move. The most common form of potential energy in mechanics is gravitational potential energy, which depends on an object's mass, the height it is from the ground, and the strength of the gravitational field it is in.

How is Potential Energy Calculated?

Calculating potential energy can be done with the following variables:

Mass

Gravitational acceleration

Height

Then you can use them in the potential energy formula to find that value:

An image of the formula used to calculate how much money should be in an emergency fund.

Where:

PE = Potential energy

M = Mass

GA = Gravitational acceleration

H = Height

Understanding Your Results

Your result will be displayed as a single number that represents the amount of potential energy in your situation. Specifically, this number will be the amount of joules. Your result will never be less than zero and your result can go as high as infinity essentially.

How to Use the Potential Energy Tool

Using our potential energy tool is easy and simple. We make it possible for you to quickly find potential energy. The steps involved include:

Enter the mass of the subject.

Edit the gravitational acceleration if necessary. By default it is set to the gravitational acceleration on Earth.

Enter the height off of the ground that the subject is.

Hit the calculate button and instantly get your potential energy.

Calculation Example

We are interested to learn about the potential energy associate with a bowling ball falling back to the ground after dropping it from a certain height. We will use this tool to better understand the potential energy it may have. It has a mass of 10 pounds, the typical gravitational acceleration on Earth, and we are able to drop it from a ledge that is 7 feet off the ground.

To use this tool to help us get the potential energy we can start by entering 10 into the mass field and changing the unit to pounds. Next, we will enter 7 into the height field and change the unit to feet. We will leave gravitational acceleration alone as that is correct already. We can now hit calculate and get 94.94 joules of potential energy.

Potential Energy - Frequently Asked Questions

Potential energy is the energy held by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, its electric charge, or other factors.

Yes, gravitational acceleration can vary depending on the location on Earth. It is generally approximated as 9.81 m/s², but it can be slightly more or less depending on altitude and geographical location.

While many familiar examples involve height, potential energy can also arise from other situations like the compression of a spring (elastic potential energy) or the arrangement of charges in an electric field (electric potential energy).

You can use one of our other tools, our Energy Converter, to help you convert your joules into another unit of energy measurement.

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