Energy, Potential, or Static Energy

The capacity for doing work in a system due to advantage of position or other cause, such as the stre of a spring. A pound weight supported ten feet above a plane has ten foot lbs. of potential energy of position referred to that plane. A given weight of an elementary substance represents potential chemical energy, which will be liberated as actual energy in its combination with some other element for which it has an affinity. Thus a ton of coal represents a quantity of potential chemical energy which appears in the kinetic form of thermal energy when the coal is burning in a furnace. A charged Leyden jar represents a source of potential electric energy, which becomes kinetic heat energy as the same is discharged.