| Abstract from DBPedia | Potential generally refers to a currently unrealized ability. The term is used in a wide variety of fields, from physics to the social sciences to indicate things that are in a state where they are able to change in ways ranging from the simple release of energy by objects to the realization of abilities in people. The philosopher Aristotle incorporated this concept into his theory of potentiality and actuality, a pair of closely connected principles which he used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima, which is about the human psyche. That which is potential can theoretically be made actual by taking the right action; for example, a boulder on the edge of a cliff has potential to fall that could be actualized by pushing it over the edge. Several languages have a potential mood, a grammatical construction that indicates that something is potential. These include Finnish, Japanese, and Sanskrit. 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, Volta potential, electrode potential, and standard electrode potential. In thethermodynamics, the term potential often refers to thermodynamic potential.ポテンシャル（英: potential）は、潜在力、潜在性を意味する物理用語。 最初にポテンシャル（スカラーポテンシャル）の考え方を導入したのは、ジョゼフ＝ルイ・ラグランジュである（1773年）。ラグランジュの段階ではポテンシャルとは言われておらず、これをポテンシャルと呼んだのは、ジョージ・グリーンである（1828年）。カール・フリードリヒ・ガウス、ウィリアム・トムソン、ペーター・グスタフ・ディリクレによってポテンシャル論における三つの基本問題として、ディリクレ問題、ノイマン問題、斜交微分の問題が注目されるようになった。 ポテンシャルエネルギー（位置エネルギー）のことをポテンシャルと呼ぶこともある。 (Source: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Potential) |
