To find out the area, the equation is ½ x base x height. This makes the equation for the amount of energy stored in a spring ½ x force x compression. The force and the compression on the spring in this toy will always be the same, more or less. This energy stored in the spring will be equal to the toy’s gravitational potential energy, as Einstein said that energy cannot be created or destroyed, just changed from one form into another. Providing no energy is lost, the transfer of energy from the spring will be 100% compared to the amount of energy used to make the toy fly. The equation for gravitational potential energy is mass x gravity x height. In this experiment the mass will be the variable, the height will be what is measured, and the gravity will remain constant.
Method
The method for this experiment will be simply to ‘arm’ the bug-up, and then get someone else to measure how high it flies using a metre ruler. Each time the experiment is repeated, a different mass will be used on the bug-up. To do this, I will need to remove the plastic cover and then devise some method of attaching weights – a combination of washers, blue-tac and sellotape will be needed.
Apparatus:
1 Bug-up Sellotape
1 Metre Ruler Blue-tac
1 Person (to measure) Washers
Safety
There are not a lot of safety issues in this experiment. There is no need to wear lab coats or safety goggles. The worst that could happen is that someone would fall over and injure themselves on a metre ruler, although it is not likely to happen.
Preliminary Investigation
For my preliminary experiment, I took a coil bound spring from the physics department and broke it by taking it beyond its elastic limit. After this I then hung it from a clamp stand and attached weights to the bottom and recorded the length of the spring. I then put the spring over the clamp stand and attached weights to the top to see if the compression was the same as the extension. These are my results:
As you can see, the results are perfect. They weren’t all exactly 100% exact, but they were close enough for the purposes of this investigation. This proves that the spring works exactly the same way whether you compress it, or extend it.
Results:
