How to Use potential energy in a Sentence

potential energy

noun
  • More weight means more potential energy to push the car down the slope.
    — Bradley Ford, Popular Mechanics, 12 Jan. 2023
  • Gasoline, for its many flaws, contains an enormous amount of potential energy in a very small amount of mass.
    — Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 20 May 2021
  • This energy is transferred to you in the form of potential energy.
    — Randall Munroe, Time, 12 Sep. 2019
  • That energy change is the change in electric potential energy.
    — Rhett Allain, Wired, 23 Jan. 2021
  • Over time the field would roll down the hill, and its potential energy would be converted to kinetic energy.
    — Marc Kamionkowski, Scientific American, 15 Oct. 2024
  • This 'potential energy' is gained through surface heating.
    — Ron Smiley, CBS News, 10 Mar. 2026
  • The vast potential energy of the ocean and the prospect of diminishing up-front costs appeals to investors with longer-term timelines.
    — Phil Rosen, Fortune, 28 Sep. 2021
  • But, in that moment, there was this potential energy for unity, for community.
    — Risa Sarachan, Forbes, 31 Aug. 2021
  • As a result, winter is coming, and potential energy disaster is coming with it.
    — David Blackmon, Forbes, 3 Oct. 2021
  • Two of the nation’s largest grid operators issued alerts about potential energy shortages for that reason this week.
    — Justine Calma, The Verge, 28 July 2023
  • In case of a ball thrown, minimized action is the sum over time of the difference between its kinetic and potential energy.
    — Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering, 23 Apr. 2026
  • Both possess the same mass and potential energy, but basic intuition suggests that large numbers of foam balls will not cause the same damage to you as one piano.
    — Scientific American, 13 Oct. 2021
  • Blocking that flow, for example with a cell membrane, stores up electrical potential energy.
    — Elise Cutts, Quanta Magazine, 12 Jan. 2026
  • Inside the hole, that spin makes the ball roll along the cylinder like a mini-pendulum, converting potential energy into spin and then back again.
    — Lydia Patrick, MSNBC Newsweek, 5 Nov. 2025
  • But more than being just a rich fishing ground, there is speculation the islands could harbor potential energy reserves.
    — Brad Lendon, CNN, 29 Aug. 2019
  • There’s so much potential energy lying dormant there, and last night’s awards ceremony teaches us that the voice always speaks more clearly than the body.
    — Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, 8 Jan. 2018
  • And at least one species of mantis shrimp can also increase elastic potential energy storage in proportion to increases in body mass.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 28 Aug. 2023
  • Well, there are a tremendous number of people who need help, and there's a tremendous amount of potential energy in the idea of this group of people getting back together.
    — Dan Snierson, EW.com, 1 May 2020
  • The elastic potential energy that was stored in the stick is transformed into movement, called kinetic energy.
    — Scientific American, 12 Dec. 2019
  • The higher their vibe, meaning the more they are naturally aligned with and energized by the role they have been assigned, the more potential energy is released.
    — Tabitha Scott, Forbes, 9 Aug. 2022
  • In that case, there is only one type of energy change to consider—the change in gravitational potential energy.
    — WIRED, 21 Aug. 2022
  • As October drew to a close, the White House saw another potential energy flash point on the horizon.
    — Kevin Crowley, Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Ari Natter, Anchorage Daily News, 6 Nov. 2022
  • This is because the energy barrier abruptly goes from low potential energy at the base of the well to very high potential energy either side.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 18 Jan. 2024
  • Hunt and his co-authors are not the first to propose using gravitational potential energy as a storage solution.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 6 Dec. 2019
  • Employers buy potential energy, not just kinetic skills.
    — Expert Panel®, Forbes.com, 5 Aug. 2025
  • The voltage difference that results, called the membrane potential, stores potential energy that can be released later.
    — Elise Cutts, Quanta Magazine, 12 Jan. 2026
  • South Korea has already launched an emergency response to prepare for potential energy impacts.
    — Simmone Shah, Time, 3 Mar. 2026
  • There might be kinetic energy if the whole system is moving, and there might be potential energy too (the energy stored in a system as a result of its position).
    — Popular Mechanics, 17 Mar. 2023
  • The co-op now wants to look at energy-intensive equipment such as heating and ventilating systems as potential energy resources.
    — David Wagman, IEEE Spectrum, 27 Mar. 2019
  • Kinetic energy wouldn’t affect the universe’s expansion the way the potential energy did, so its effects wouldn’t be observable as time went on.
    — Marc Kamionkowski, Scientific American, 15 Oct. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'potential energy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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