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Many physics textbook authors, in their books ignore the term "system" when discussing "potential energy of a system" (which is very important)and on reading the text it seems as if the potential energy of a single object is being talked of. This is very confusing.

Does anybody know of any physics book where the topic potential energy is dealt in detail properly and correctly with the specification that potential energy exists only for a system of objects and not a single object and which discusses the same without any discrepancies.

MrAP
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  • Potential energy is perfectly well defined for "single objects". – Pirx Dec 23 '16 at 18:45
  • @Pirx No it is not. See this: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/288744/does-the-potential-energy-of-a-single-object-exist – MrAP Dec 23 '16 at 18:51
  • I guess that depends on whether or not you consider a force field, say, an "object". So, yes, if you have some single object in "empty space", there is no potential, but I suspected the OP had a different idea in mind. I might have been wrong, of course. – Pirx Dec 23 '16 at 18:55
  • Please change the title to one that actually describes the question. – Emilio Pisanty Dec 28 '16 at 00:39

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