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Spring constant

Started by samosa May 4, 2003 at 11:49 AM 6 replies 950+ views

Original Post

May 4, 2003 at 11:49 AM

Just to let you guys know, this is for a physics project. Well were supposed to make a spring launcher for a physics assignment, its due tomorrow and Im working on the calculations. The teacher told us to make a graph of the force on the spring against the amount of weight added and find the spring constant, I forgot how to calculate the constant from the infomation. I drew a line of best fit and tried to calulate the slope of the line but Im getting some small number.... 0.1N/m to be exact and the teacher was talking about constants of 50-60 in class so I dont think Ive dont it correctly. Im currently scouring the net and my notes to find out how to do it. Also yes I do have a partner, but the dumb shit is asleep at his house, so I dont wanna be an ass and ask his family to wake him up. But I have a big problem here, any help would be greatly appeciated, thanks. And sorry about the long post. ,Matt -= kill one your a murderer, kill thousands your a conquerer =- [edited by - samosa on May 4, 2003 1:18:49 PM]

Strife

May 4, 2003 at 12:42 PM

There is no reason why you could not have a spring constant of 0.1 N/m. There is no limit to how low or how high k can be, as it all depends on the spring itself. Smaller springs that do not have high, um, springiness will have small values of k. To calculate it, remember of course that F = -kx. All you really have to do is place weights on the end of a spring (after having measured the no weight equilibrium position) and then measure the new equilibrium position. Solving for k from there is trivial.

samosa

May 4, 2003 at 4:40 PM

Thanks for the help guys, turns out that my spring constant is 59N/m I made a mistake in the calculation and when I said my current constant was 0.1N/m it was actually N/cm i forgot to convert. Once again thanks for offering your help

,Matt

-= kill one your a murderer, kill thousands your a conquerer =-

Zipster

May 4, 2003 at 7:39 PM

I hate it when they put the values into centimeters just to mess you up. And I hate it even more when there''re in nanometers for wavelengths.

Strife

May 4, 2003 at 7:54 PM

Uh, right. The reason they do that is so that you''ll learn to pay attention to those things, especially in your answers. Because if you get a really weird sounding answer, the first thing you should go and check is if you did in fact use the correct units (that way you don''t accidentally try to claim that the speed of light is 3.0 x 10^20 m/s or something like that).

grhodes_at_work

May 5, 2003 at 9:41 PM

quote:
Original post by samosa
Also yes I do have a partner, but the dumb shit is asleep at his house, so I dont wanna be an ass and ask his family to wake him up. But I have a big problem here, any help would be greatly appeciated, thanks. And sorry about the long post.

Please let your teacher know that your partner did not help you solve the problem.

I''m glad you solve the problem on your own,

.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

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