Why does a proton reduce its potential energy when it moves from higher potential to lower potential?
Why does a proton reduce its potential energy when it moves from higher potential to lower potential?
Dear student,
i hope your question is related to electric current/ electricity.
If it is, I must bring to your notice that electricity is not due to flow of protons, but electrons. Usually protons never move. They are strongly held to the nucleas of an atom. It is the electron flow which causes current.
Now standing at this viewpoint and explaining the answer, Let us consider two points A and B.
"A" has two positive charges and one negative charge at same distance with different charges such that resultant potential at A is a positive value which means charge of the positive charges is more dominant. (The two and one are just arbitrary numbers I chose, what matters the most is that positive charges dominate near the point "A")
"B" is far away from "A" but its resultant electric potential is negative.
Now since the region around point "A" is dominated by positive charge, It will be difficult to bring additional positive charges near it and at the same time if there are any negative charges around, they will try coming to the point "A"
Hence electrons try to move from negative ( lower potential) to positive ( higher potential) which means nothing but conventional current ( opposite to the direction of electron flow) flows from higher potential "A" to lower potential "B"
But to maintain the flow of current we must maintain this potential. If a negative charge after coming to the point "A" neutralizes the positive charge around it and brings down the potential to zero no additional negative charges flow towards the point "A".
This is what they try to avoid in batteries, no matter what,between cathode and anode potential is always maintained to facilitate flow of current. You can read about functioning of batteries to know more about how potential is maintained.
i hope your question is related to electric current/ electricity.
If it is, I must bring to your notice that electricity is not due to flow of protons, but electrons. Usually protons never move. They are strongly held to the nucleas of an atom. It is the electron flow which causes current.
Now standing at this viewpoint and explaining the answer, Let us consider two points A and B.
"A" has two positive charges and one negative charge at same distance with different charges such that resultant potential at A is a positive value which means charge of the positive charges is more dominant. (The two and one are just arbitrary numbers I chose, what matters the most is that positive charges dominate near the point "A")
"B" is far away from "A" but its resultant electric potential is negative.
Now since the region around point "A" is dominated by positive charge, It will be difficult to bring additional positive charges near it and at the same time if there are any negative charges around, they will try coming to the point "A"
Hence electrons try to move from negative ( lower potential) to positive ( higher potential) which means nothing but conventional current ( opposite to the direction of electron flow) flows from higher potential "A" to lower potential "B"
But to maintain the flow of current we must maintain this potential. If a negative charge after coming to the point "A" neutralizes the positive charge around it and brings down the potential to zero no additional negative charges flow towards the point "A".
This is what they try to avoid in batteries, no matter what,between cathode and anode potential is always maintained to facilitate flow of current. You can read about functioning of batteries to know more about how potential is maintained.
