Hooke's law lab report. Hookes law and the investigation of spring constant k

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Hooke’s law and the investigation of spring constant k

  • Aim

To examine Hooke’s law and to determine the value of spring constant k.

  • Introduction

Robert Hooke (1635-1708) was born at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, son of John Hooke, curate at All Saints' Church . He was one of the most brilliant and versatile of seventeenth-century English scientists, who discovered the law of elasticity. Between 1658 and 1678 Robert Hooke worked on his invention of the watch-spring and developed his theory of elasticity, now known as Hooke’s law. Hooke’s law states that "the extension of a helical spring is directly proportional to the weight applied, provided the elastic limit of the spring is not exceeded."  However, the limitation of this law is if the spring is stretched beyond its elastic limit, meaning that there is a limit to a spring where if you stretch it too much it will deform, thus the spring will have a new spring constant. Below is the equation of Hooke’s law:

*where F = the force applied, here is the weight (N), k = the spring constant (N/m), e = the size of displacement (m)

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Historical background: Hooke was never a person who did one thing at a time; indeed he seemed at his best when his mind was jumping from one idea to another. At the same time that he was working on the air pump he was also thinking about clocks and how they could be used in determining the longitude at sea. Realising the weakness of the pendulum clock in keeping time on a ship which was pitching and tossing, he wondered about the:-

    ... use of springs instead of gravity for making a body vibrates in any posture.

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