Experimental demonstration that voltage is a measure of energy

Physics and engineering students usually have difficulty grasping that ldquovoltagerdquo in electrical circuits is actually a measure of energy. This paper describes an advanced experiment that was designed at the University of West Florida for directly demonstrating that the voltage between two given points in an electrostatic field is a measure of the energy required to move a unit charge between those points. In the experiment, a computerized vehicle transports a charged metal plate between two electrodes connected to a voltage source, while directly measuring the energy exerted in moving the plate.