I have a problematic question for which I have been unable to attain a satisfactory answer. What is potential energy truly?
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I have read about how potential energy can be seen as the "highering" of an object within a field, be it gravitational, electromagnetic, etc.
In a way, an object is lifted to a higher position, and when it eventually falls down again energy is released back.
The object does not even have to be "lifted" beforehand, as with the case of asteroids.
However, since energy cannot be destroyed, it must somehow be stored, yet how does energy truly store itself within a field? It seems hard for me to grasp that energy can physically be stored within the positioning of an object?
I can't really get my head around how a field conserves energy within it. Kinetic energy on the other hand, can be, for me, intuitively understood, as the object really is "moving" and energy manifests itself through motion.
Can anyone elaborate on this, perhaps give reasoning as to why a field can in fact "store" energy? Please point out any fallacious or naive views I seem to hold.
Best Answer
If you place a huge boulder at the edge of a large cliff, and give it a small poke just as a bear is ambling below, the bear below will be completely obliterated upon impact by the boulder. There was definitely energy released in the concomitant bear annihilation; where did it come from?
Well, the energy was physically stored in the positioning of the boulder.
Unfortunately, if you are looking for a deeper physical intuitive understanding of why this is, you probably won't find one. You can devise various formalisms, such as the notion of an underlying gravitational potential well $U_\text{grav}(h)=mgh$, but to some extent, you simply might have to accept as an axiom that energy can be stored in the form of work performed against a potential, since that seems to be how physical reality operates.
There are probably more mathematically complicated or physically elegant ways to encode this basic idea, so I'll await other users explanations, but hopefully the above gives some small measure of insight.