20 November 2014: Mass Spring Oscillations Lab Lab 20

Objective:
The purpose of this experiment is to find the spring constant of a spring using our own methods and compare it to the spring constants of other springs.

Procedure and Results:

The set up for this lab required the hanging of a spring by a rods and clamps, This this spring, some masses could be added.

The procedure to find the spring constant of our spring started with placing a motion sensor below the spring and recording its height without any weight attached to it. Its height was .21 m We then added 500 g to the spring and again recorded its height. Its height with the mass was 4.9 m. We then divided both these heights as they were the amount that the spring was stretched. This gave us our value for our spring constant (k):

k= 4.9/.21= 23.3 N/m

After we had found our k, we went on to measure the mass of our spring. Our spring had a mass of 27.7 g.

We then had to find the period of our spring. We did this by adding many different masses to the spring and recording the spring's oscillations with the motion detector used earlier. We then analyzed the motion of the spring and its resultant graphs. The graphs can be seen below:

From this data we were able to determine using the position part that the spring had a period of 0.42 s. We then compared our data to other people's data and placed their values into this organized table:

From this table we, were able to construct a graph using all the periods of all the springs and all the spring constants of all the springs:

As you can see the fit for this graph was a power fit.

From the table above we could also create using all the masses of all the springs and all the periods of all the springs:

The curve fit for this graph was a power fit.

Conclusions:

From this lab, we were able to learn how to find the spring constant of a real spring. Also, we were able to find its period. From the graphs of everyone's data, we can learn that as mass of the spring increases so does its period. This makes sense because if the spring has more mass, it will be able to oscillate more as the 1/3 mass of itself contributes oscillations; if there is more mass, there is more to contribute. Also, as spring constant increases, period decreases . This makes sense because a more firm spring will resist oscillations more than a weak spring.