Abstract
MOST persons must agree with your correspondent, “X.,” that the term “potential energy” has been used with considerable vagueness and with some difference of meaning by various writers. They may even go further, and doubt at times whether they are quite clear with respect to the cases to which the terms “force” and “energy” are respectively applicable. But this arises, I am inclined to think, from the difficulty of understanding what is force, and would certainly not be removed by bringing these two terms into more frequent and closer juxtaposition than that in which they are now found.
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References
Clerk Maxwell, "Matter and Motion," p. 81.
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M., P. Potential Energy. Nature 16, 500–501 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016500b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016500b0
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