Hooke's Law Lab (6/9)
In previous years, I've had students use spreadsheets to get the graph. Here's my data from the 2017-18 school year.
You really need to be good at graphing both by hand and with computers. I include this picture for that reason, and also because of the logic presented on it.
This picture contains my data for how a particular spring stretches. We linearize the equation we got from Newton's 2nd Law on the previous slide and graph these variables, finding that the linear guess for the force law is great and we don't need to try others. We can use the slope of the graph to calculate the constant k, which is called the spring constant. It represents how stiff the spring is.
This spring and many springs give this linear force law, named after the 17th Century English scientist Robert Hooke, who originally discovered it. But not all do. Generally, we have to check whether a spring follows the law (such a spring is called a linear spring) using a quick experiment like this.
Hooke's Law Lab (6/9)
In previous years, I've had students use spreadsheets to get the graph. Here's my data from the 2017-18 school year.
You really need to be good at graphing both by hand and with computers. I include this picture for that reason, and also because of the logic presented on it.
This picture contains my data for how a particular spring stretches. We linearize the equation we got from Newton's 2nd Law on the previous slide and graph these variables, finding that the linear guess for the force law is great and we don't need to try others. We can use the slope of the graph to calculate the constant k, which is called the spring constant. It represents how stiff the spring is.
This spring and many springs give this linear force law, named after the 17th Century English scientist Robert Hooke, who originally discovered it. But not all do. Generally, we have to check whether a spring follows the law (such a spring is called a linear spring) using a quick experiment like this.