Please tell the hell is potential difference and EMF and the difference between the both and tell what’s Voltage
Explain like i am 5 🙂
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There’s a rock on the ground. If you lifted it and let go, it would pick up speed as it fell.
This rock clearly has more energy when lifted than when it is on the ground. We call this energy that comes from its location “potential energy”.
Gravity isn’t the only source of potential energy. Magnets snap together, so they must also have potential energy.
Electrons are attracted to protons and repelled by other electrons, so they must also have some form of potential energy. However, there are a *lot* of electrons and protons floating around, so this kind of potential energy is a lot less simple than gravity.
What we can say pretty easily is that an electron wants to fall towards a lower potential energy. An electron will move from a low potential to a high potential (since electrons have negative charge, some of this comes out backwards, but moving to a “positive potential” is still a lower *potential energy*.
Voltage is what we call this electrical potential. It is a measurement of how much energy an electron releases as it moves between two spots. This is why you always need to measure two spots to find a voltage – you’re comparing them.
EMF is more or less the same thing. I don’t think this distinction is worth touching on for an ELI5.
Electric charges— er, objects with electric charges— like to be in some places more than others. When they’re in a place they don’t like, they have potential energy: if they can move to a place they like better, they’ll release energy in doing so, which frequently comes in the form of accelerating (gaining kinetic energy). Likewise, they resist being moved to a place they like worse, and store up energy if they’re forced into it.
Electric potential is a measure of how badly an electric charge does or doesn’t like a certain place; the difference in potential between two places reflects how much energy is released, or required, by the move between them. The unit of potential is the volt.
They are all essentially the same thing.
Let’s compare it to gravity. U = mgh (gravitational potential energy) and U = qV (electrical potential energy)
Voltage in this case is the electrical potential, where as gh is the gravitational potential. Voltage has units of J/C, gh has units of J/kg
If we compare it to water in a pipe, the pressure is the driving force behind the flow, just like voltage is the driving force behind the current. Pressure can have units of J/m^3 , and flow has units of m^3 /s where as voltage and current are J/C and C/s
It’s just a measure of how charges will be affected in an electric field regardless of the magnitude of its own charge
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