Geopotential
Energy related to Earth's gravity / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Geopotential is the potential of the Earth's gravity field. For convenience it is often defined as the negative of the potential energy per unit mass, so that the gravity vector is obtained as the gradient of the geopotential, without the negation. In addition to the actual potential (the geopotential), a hypothetical normal potential and their difference, the disturbing potential, can also be defined.
This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (July 2014) |