As we all know, lifting an object in a gravitational field requires energy. A heavy object on the floor requires a certain amount of energy to be expended to raise it from the floor to, say for example a table surface. The energy that is used enters the objects potential energy store. More accurately, the PE store is regarded as the gravitational potential energy or GPE store. The higher up the object is lifted the more energy is transferred into this GPE store and the amount of energy transferred can be quite simply calculated with the following formula:


Where Ep represents the energy in the store, "m" is the mass of the object in kilograms, "g" is the gravitational field strength in newtons per kilogram and "h" is the height through which the object is moved or raised.


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