AHA! Thank you both. Finally it makes sense. I feel like I've been hiding under a rock or something. I didn't differentiate between average and instantaneous forces. Finally I understand thank you for all your help and patience.
Oh only one thing I want to clear up. Work obviously equals force times distance so, how can the work done on the spring be 3 times greater from x to 2x if the force is only doubled? This is the only reason I don't understand this problem. It seems like doubling the weight should only double...
I guess I may never make sense out of this. It seems as though more potential energy is being created than work that is done by gravity. Thanks for all your help.
Well if the longer a spring gets the harder it is to stretch then doesn't adding the same weight again not double the length? The first 0.2 kg stretched it 5 cm, but the second 0.2 kg should stretch it less because it became harder to stretch it that additional distance. Both 0.2k kilogram...
I went through the math and I understand mathematically why the answer is that the potential energy quadruples. What I still don't understand is why the potential energy can be twice as much as the force required to hold up the weights... obviously the recoiling force of the spring would be...
My Teacher gave me an interesting problem in AP Physics which seemed simple at first but has me going insane. The problem was what would happen to the potential energy contained in a spring if 0.2 kg was added to the original 0.2 kg on the spring, which stretched the spring 5 cm. The...
I just recently saw a video in Physics class about Einstein's thought experiment that led to his discovery of Special Relativity. I was just curious how he knew at that time that light always moves at c even when the observer of the light is moving. I know that is the most important part of SR...
If gravity doesn't rotate with the Earth then you could potentially orbit the Earth at a critical velocity but not move at all compared to the ground. And in that case it would take no energy to stay airborne. Gravity has to rotate with the earth.
Okay, relativity and gravity don't seem to like getting along even with the General Theory. Think about this: Obviously everyone knows the simple way of thinking of gravity as a force pulling you toward a mass. The force is inversely proportional to the distance with 1/4 in there somewhere (I...
well yes he did have to accelerate initially however... does time dilation still affect you if you aren't accelerating anymore? think about it this way, yes it makes sense when you are accelerating becasue if you said that the ship was staying still then the passenger would have to be...
Okay, everyone knows about the twins paradox, you know one twin flies around near the speed of light in a spaceship or whatever and when he comes back he's 50 years younger than his twin brother. Well... according to relativity you can reverse any motion and say that the universe is passing by...