Pro Physics Lab

Lab: Force of a Spring

Purpose: To determine how the force of a spring depends on how much the spring is stretched.

Materials: A Stand, 2 different types of springs, various masses, a meter stick, hook

Method: After attaching the hook on the stand and putting a spring on the hook, I used a meter stick to measure the initial length of the spring. After that we used different masses to measure the length of the spring when different amounts of force were exerted on it. We measured the length of the spring from one hook to another.

Data:

Conclusion:

After doing this lab i definetely found out how the force of a spring depends on how much itis stretched. When we apply force on an object, that object applies the same amount of force on us. In other words if we puch on an object, the object pushes back on us. As with the springs, when we added mass to them, the springs were pulled towards the floor by gravity (which was applying a force on the spring and mass). At the same time, the spring was being pulled by the same amount of force but in the opposite direction. The harder we pull the spring downwards, the more amount of force will be exerted on it and it will pull upwards.If I were to do this lab differently i would have used a different type of spring such as one made from another type of material or a spring that acted differently when mass was put on it.

There's not a very drastic difference between the length of a 1.0 kg mass and a 0.10 kg mass. I think we would be able to see a huge difference in the lengths if we used a 20 or 30 kg mass and compared it with a 1 or 5 kg mass. However to use a 30 kg mass we would need a heavy-duty spring. If we compare between the two different types of spring that we used