potential energy
nounDefinition of potential energy
: the energy that a piece of matter has because of its position or nature or because of the arrangement of parts
Examples of potential energy in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
By the time the average temperatures have been falling in our area, hurricane season is still just coming alive with the ocean waters at their maximum warmth and potential energy. — Dave Epstein, BostonGlobe.com, "What’s up with hurricane season?," 13 Aug. 2019 By spinning the electric motor backward, the car will be able to turn the kinetic energy of braking into potential energy that’s stored in something like a flywheel or a small battery. — Sean O'kane, The Verge, "IndyCar will race 900-horsepower hybrid cars starting in 2022," 1 Aug. 2019 My calculations consider all of the energy from the human going into gravitational potential energy to increase distance. — Rhett Allain, WIRED, "How Long Would It Take to Bicycle to the Moon?," 18 July 2019 Yet the issue of initial conditions remained: What was the source of the minuscule patch that allegedly ballooned into our cosmos, and of the potential energy that inflated it? — Quanta Magazine, "Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning," 6 June 2019 Multiple limbs remained under tension, creating a puzzle of potential energy waiting to be released. — Popular Mechanics, "When Storms Fell the Trees, Father and Son Make the Most of the Mess," 13 Oct. 2018 There is immense potential energy in the GND, a concentration of social attention and intensity. — David Roberts, Vox, "The Green New Deal, explained," 21 Dec. 2018 From ions to waves, there's a lot of potential energy in the water that covers 70 percent of the planet, and these hydrophobic surfaces could help tap into that energy. — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, "A New Hydrophobic Surface Could Turn the Ocean's Waves Into Electricity," 4 Oct. 2018 Due to a potential energy crisis, South Australia has experienced numerous blackouts. — Rye Druzin, Houston Chronicle, "Largest solar farm in Texas getting battery system," 19 June 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'potential energy.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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