>>10354360The potential at any point in a field is the total energy (per unit charge) required to move a charge to that point from a point infinitely far away (zero potential).
A negative charge is attracted to the positive plate and repelled from the negative plate. You need to add energy to move it toward the negative plate, or can extract energy by allowing it to move toward the positive plate.
It's common to use gravity as an analogy, as a gravitational field is also a potential field. Height = potential. The higher something is, the greater its potential. You need to add energy to move a mass upwards and can extract energy by allowing it to move downward.
> because the further away it gets from the negative plate, its push decreases on it, but at the same time it's getting closer to the positive plate and its pull increases reversely proportional to the push of the negative plate,For parallel plates whose dimensions are much larger than the distance between them, the force on a charge at any point between them is approximately constant. For two spheres, where the distance between them is large compared to their radii, the total force would be the sum of two inverse-square-law forces (a strong repulsive force near the negative sphere, a strong attractive force near the positive sphere, and a weaker force in between).
> but it comes down to the distance it has to travel between the two plates?No, just the voltage. If you move the plates farther apart, the energy required to move from one to the other remains constant. The energy required to move a given distance increases. With the gravity analogy, this corresponds to the slope of a hill getting shallower while its height remains fixed.
