Investigating Hooke's Law

• Hooke's Law

  The force applied to a spring is proportional to how far it stretches
• Experiment to find the extension of a spring

  1. Hang spring from clamp stand without masses
  2. Add masses of same weight one at a time so the force increases
  3. After each mass is added, measure the new length and calculate the extension
• When the results of Hooke's law experiment are recorded onto a graph with force on y and extension on x, the spring constant is the gradient
• If your extension is on the y axis and force is on the x axis, the graph is wrong so you need to reciprocal the gradient to find the spring constant
• Equation for energy transferred ( work done )when stretching a spring


  energy transferred in stretching = 0.5 x spring constant x extension^2
• In a force-extension graph, the energy transferred is the area below the line