Jimmy,+Navin,+Anthony,+Aaron

= Elastic Potential Lab = By Navin Raj, Anthony Iannetta, Aaron Chang, and Jimmy Ferrara Due: March 8, 2011

**Purpose**
To find the spring force constant of a specific spring

**Hypothesis/Rationale**
This experiment will produce a low k value because the spring is relatively soft Looking at Hooke's Law can show why we thought this



Since it takes little force to compress and stretch the spring long distances, the k value has to be low.

**Materials**
Spring, ruler, stand, attachable weight, varied masses

**Procedure**
1. Attach the spring to the stand 2. Put on the weight attachment 3. Record initial height 4. Put on different masses and record the different heights

**Data**
Data Table of Results:



Graph of Change of Position vs. Force:



**Conclusion**
We tested to find the Spring Force Constant (K) in this lab. As you can see in the data above, our K-Value came out to be 3.838 with a r^2 value of .9995. This means that our found K-value was quite close to what it really should be.

Class Data Class average is 3.7079 Percent difference (Experimental - Average)/(Average)*100 (3.838-3.7079)/(3.7079)*100 3.51%
 * Trials || 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 ||
 * Slope || 3.5908 || 3.8463 || 4.1566 || 3.4724 || 3.3455 || 3.7054 || 3.838 ||
 * R 2 || 0.9962 || 0.9999 || 0.9922 || 0.992 || 0.9912 || 0.9986 || 0.9995 ||

**Purpose**
To use the laws of energy conservation and Hooke's Law to find the final velocity of a cart attached to a spring.

**Hypothesis/Rationale**
As the cart is moved back along the track, making the spring more stretched out, the cart should have a higher final velocity. Since Elastic Potential Energy equals Kinetic Energy, the more EPE there is the more KE there is. Therefore we can assume that the more the spring attached to the car is stretched the more final velocity we can observe.

**Materials**
Cart, Photogate timer, track, spring, laptop with Datastudio and Excel

**Procedure**
1. Place Photogate timer on track and connect to laptop with DataStudio 2. Place cart on track with spring attached 3. Attack other end of spring to nail at end of track 4. Pull the cart opposite direction of spring stretching it out. 5. Release cart and take data from DataStudio from each trial 6. Release cart from 5 different distances 7. Perform 3 trials for each distance

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**Data**


Theoretical Values Table (includes length started and pulled back to):



Experimental Values Table (includes length started and pulled back to, and trials)