Imagine this: You have a ball in your hand. The farther you lift the ball from the ground (against Earth's gravity), the more work you do. This work you do is related to the gravitational potential energy the ball gains due to its position.

Gravitational potential, on the other hand, is a property of the gravitational field itself. It tells you how much work per unit mass you'd need to invest to move an object from a specific reference point (usually chosen at infinity) to a particular location within that field.

Think of it like water pressure. Higher pressure (potential) means more work is needed to move something against that pressure. In gravity, the closer you get to a massive object, the greater the gravitational potential (and the more negative it becomes, as we'll see).

Here are some key points about gravitational potential:

• It's a scalar field, meaning it has a magnitude (a value) at every point in space, but not a direction.

• It's often denoted by the symbol V.

• The reference point for zero potential is by convention set at infinity. This means the gravitational potential at any finite distance from a mass is negative (because gravity is attractive).

• Gravitational potential is closely linked to gravitational potential energy (GPE). The GPE of an object is essentially the potential energy it has due to its position in a gravitational field. The equation for GPE involves the object's mass, the gravitational potential at its location, and a constant.