Great- thanks everyone. The kids in question haven't actually even done much differential calculus, so I guess they can be forgiven for not knowing that EPE is the area under a Fx graph...
THOUGH I think we have talked about work being the area under a Fs graph... so, ok, yeah, they could...
I wish I could draw a picture. Do you know what a spring balance is?
it's a plastic cylinder with a spring in it with a hook on the end. you put stuff on the hook and pull. A scale written up the side gives you readings in either grams (this one was in grams) or Newtons.
Their cannon was...
No, actually, compress. I was under the impression that hooke's kaw applied in this case too. Perhaps it doesn't?
so, they were pulling... basically a piston? With a spring balance, that caused the spring to compress.
Hi all,
I'm a physics teacher at an australian high school, and some kids that I teach have give me some interesting data reguarding spring constants.
They made a contraption to project marbles as part of an analysis of projectile motion, and part of the contraption was a spring, used to...