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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: What is a volt - on a physical level?
« on: 27/07/2014 01:51:38 »
I doubt that this will help any, but since you haven't accepted the answers from science (although they were correct), let me step up into a field above science, Ontology.
When you ask science of what something is made, all they can do is give names of components and how they behave. That is their ontological limit. What they "are in reality" is not a science question, much like asking a quantum physicist why something happens, it just isn't his field.
The concept and definition of a potential is, as you were told, "the ability to accomplish something". But it seems that you want more on that. A potential is actually a situation formed by other things. For example, the potential for an apple falling from a tree, is the situation of the apple hanging by a weak stem with nothing under it while in a gravity field. The potential is entirely made of the situation. It is not a substance, but rather what causes substance (action).
In the case of the electric potential, the situation that causes EMR is measured in voltage and is made of the non-homogeneous changing of the surrounding situation (surrounding potentials).
When a potential changes, that changing is what constitutes the substance of which the entire universe is made, commonly referred to as "random EMR". The universe and all substance within is made of the changing of electric potential which in itself is a potential, a situation. That caused-situation then causes the next changing of the situation, the next potential. And that endless process is the entirely of the physical universe, somewhat randomly dispersed.
So the bottom line is that an electric potential is merely a measurement of the unevenness of the situation of surrounding potentials. And to increase a potential is to make the situation more uneven, increasing the changes of potential in one location while decreasing the potential situation in another location; "increasing the gravity beneath the apple, while further weakening the stem".
The universe has no more to offer than that and actually needs no more than that for all physical existence to be what it is.
When you ask science of what something is made, all they can do is give names of components and how they behave. That is their ontological limit. What they "are in reality" is not a science question, much like asking a quantum physicist why something happens, it just isn't his field.
The concept and definition of a potential is, as you were told, "the ability to accomplish something". But it seems that you want more on that. A potential is actually a situation formed by other things. For example, the potential for an apple falling from a tree, is the situation of the apple hanging by a weak stem with nothing under it while in a gravity field. The potential is entirely made of the situation. It is not a substance, but rather what causes substance (action).
In the case of the electric potential, the situation that causes EMR is measured in voltage and is made of the non-homogeneous changing of the surrounding situation (surrounding potentials).
When a potential changes, that changing is what constitutes the substance of which the entire universe is made, commonly referred to as "random EMR". The universe and all substance within is made of the changing of electric potential which in itself is a potential, a situation. That caused-situation then causes the next changing of the situation, the next potential. And that endless process is the entirely of the physical universe, somewhat randomly dispersed.
So the bottom line is that an electric potential is merely a measurement of the unevenness of the situation of surrounding potentials. And to increase a potential is to make the situation more uneven, increasing the changes of potential in one location while decreasing the potential situation in another location; "increasing the gravity beneath the apple, while further weakening the stem".
The universe has no more to offer than that and actually needs no more than that for all physical existence to be what it is.