Learning goal: to review the concept of conservative forces and to understand that electrostatic forces are, in fact, conservative. as you may recall from mechanics, some forces have a very special property, namely, that the work done on an object does not depend on the object's trajectory; rather, it depends only on the initial and the final positions of the object. such forces are called conservative forces. if only conservative forces act within a closed system, the total amount of mechanical energy is conserved within the system (hence the term "conservative"). such forces have a number of properties that simplify the solution of many problems. you may also recall that a potential energy function can be defined with respect to a conservative force. this property of conservative forces will be of particular interest of us. not all forces that we deal with are conservative, of course. for instance, the amount of work done by a frictional force very much depends on the object's trajectory. friction, therefore, is not a conservative force. in contrast, the gravitational force is the most common example of a conservative force. what about electrostatic (coulomb) forces? are they conservative, and is there a potential energy function associated with them?