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 Originally Posted by OngBonga
^ hmm that's not quite right. I'm neglecting work, which is an important factor. Plus, we should know how much "potential heat" is stored in chemical bonds, yet it seems it's impossible to know how much enthalpy a system has.
It's the same issue in electronics where it's impossible to know the voltage at any point in space (or on a circuit board). We don't know where 0 is. We can wave our hands and say the Earth (ground) is 0 V, but we can't prove it. We can only prove the difference in voltage between any 2 points.
It's not because of anything special about electronics or voltage. It's a property of conservative potential energy fields - path independent fields. (I think the word conservative is implied by the word potential, even.)
It's even in gravitational potential, mgh. h is a free parameter, relative to our coordinate system. We're free to place our coordinate system wherever we like, so it's not even clear whether or not anything *has* potential energy without saying with respect to what.
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