What is the relationship between an object's height above the ground and its gravitational potential energy?

In general, potential energy refers to stored energy. That is, potential energy is energy that is stored and can be changed into other forms of energy as the potential energy is released. Gravitational potential energy is energy that is stored by a system and it comes from an object's height above the ground. Normally gravitational potential energy is changed into kinetic energy. That is, as an object falls toward the ground, the gravitational potential energy is changed into kinetic energy. It is easy to see that the amount of gravitational potential energy increases as the height h above the ground increases. Indeed, there is a directly proportional relationship between the height h and the gravitational potential energy. The equation for gravitational potential energy is: GPE = mgh, where m is the mass of the object, g is the acceleration due to gravity (9.80 m/s^2), and h is the height above the ground.