PHYSICS 5A Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Tennis Ball, Robert Hooke, Physical Law
Document Summary
Physics 5a_ lecture 15_ spring and hooke"s law. Robert hooke was a contemporary of newton. Hooke had many accomplishments; one in particular involves springs. Springs are devices that push back when you compress them and that pull back when you stretch them. Suppose a spring is neither stretched or compressed. It will have a fixed length (also known as equilibrium length x-initial). If it was stretching the spring to a longer length x. The change in the spring length is x = x x 0 where x will be a positive quantity since we stretched the spring. Once the spring pulls back with a force, it will return to its equilibrium length. Hooke"s law demonstrates a restoring force that is proportional to the change in the spring length. In the equation, the k is the spring constant and has units n/m. The constant k is just a property of a particular spring it varies from spring to spring.
