Does Charge Flow Depend on Electric Potential or Electric Potential Energy?

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Suppose I have a positively charged object A (+100C) and two other charged objects B (+10C) & C (+5C) in the vicinity of A i.e. in A's electric field. They are both equidistant from A. So, we can understand that B has a higher electric potential energy than C with respect to A due to the higher magnitude of charge of B.

Now, if I connect B and C by a wire, then positive charges will move from B to C in order to make their electric potential energies equal.

I understand this part.

Now, what will happen if we remove A? Now, we have nothing to compare B and C with, except each other. By comparing them with each other, we find that they both have the same potential energies with respect to each other. If we connect them by a wire, what will happen now?

Also, what if we make B negatively charged? What will happen then?

Also, does the flow of current depend on electric potential energy or electric potential?

Best Answer

The short answer to your question is potential energy. Absolutely everything is always trying to get to the lowest potential energy state possible.

Let's start with the fundamental difference between electric potential and electric potential energy: electric potential energy is always in reference to a specific charge (the energy of the charge,) while electric potential is in reference to a region of space (the voltage across a battery.)

A bit of a problem here is that your allowing the amount of charge to change when connecting the two charges with a wire. In that scenario, to truly talk about the potential energy, you would have to add up the potential energy of each individual electron/proton. We can kind of do this in the case without charge A, it explains why all the charges get evenly spread: the charges want to be as far as possible from each other, so they all end up compromising and being equidistant from one another. However in the case of having charge A, talking about the electric potential energy of each individual charge is not practical. This is where electric potential comes in.

The electric potential describes what will happen to charges once they are put into that region of space. In this case, the potential from charge A will decrease inverse of the distance from charge A. Positive charge wants to get to lower electric potential (because that allows it to get to a lower potential energy.) This means the charge will want to get as far away as possible and you'll end up with 7.5 C of charge concentrated at each end of the wire, evenly spread by the same argument as above.

Conversely, negative charge wants to get to the highest electric potential possible, because that gets it to a lower potential energy. In this case by lower potential energy I mean a more negative potential energy. If charge B is -10 C, then you'll have partial cancelation with charge C and end up with -5 C that will be concentrated at the point closest to charge A on the wire.

This reveals why it is often better to talk about electric potential rather than electric potential energy in circuits. You don't want to worry about what each individual electron is doing, you just want an idea of what the charge will do overall.