October 8 2014: Works acting on a spring system

Purpose: To find the works acting on a spring system with a hanging mass in movement for 10 seconds.

  This is our spring system with a hanging mass. We also have a motion sensor on the ground to calculate data such as position, velocity, time, etc...

Explanation: First, we are going to measure the spring stretched and not stretched to find the constant k of the spring. Then we are going to obtain data by letting the system move up and down for 10 seconds and allowing the motion sensor to capture that. With those information, we are going to create a data table containing the KE of the system, the GPE of the system, the Elastic PE, the GPE of the spring, the KE of the spring, and the Total Energy in the system. We have equations to find the values of these energies.

 This is the data table that we have for the energies present on the system at certain time.

 These two graphs are one for the position vs. time of the system and one for the velocity vs. time of the system.

This is the graph of all the energies on the system, the top(purple) energy is the total energy. We made a mistake probably on finding the constant K, because the total energy should be a straight line, since energy is barely lost while the system is in movement.

 These calculations show how we found each type of energy present in the system. The professor made the derivations with us in class.

This picture shows just what are the equations for each one of the energies.

Summary: First, we derived, with the professor, all the energy equations that were necessary to complete this lab. Then we set our spring system to perform the experiment. We calculated the constant "k" by stretching the spring with the mass, and then we allowed the spring to stay in movement for 10 seconds, so that the motion sensor could obtain the information necessary to the computer. Having the equations for the energies, with the data information from the motion sensor, we created a graph by using the values of the energies at certain time. From that, we were able to know the energies present in the system at specific moments. However, I think we made a mistake in calculating the constant "k," because the total energy was supposed to be a straight line, since energy is not lost in the system, but our total energy was in oscillation form. We can conclude that our lab was almost successful, we got values for all the energies, but the total energy did not come out as expected.