General Question About Spring/Mass System

[Meadman23]

In a spring/mass system problem, if you are given your values in units of feet and pounds, are you supposed to convert them to units of Newtons and meters??

 

[NascentOxygen]

If you are using formulae which have been designed for the mks system, then yes, you must use mks units.

 

[Meadman23]

In my case, I'm not really sure what I should use. For my problem, when I use the kx=mg equation and solve for my mass, I end up getting an answer in units of slugs.


http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mechanics/slug.html


Looking at the above link, it tells me that a slug is a unit of mass, so I'll have to try to go with it...

 

[PICsmith]

...I end up getting an answer in units of slugs.

Haha! I've never heard of slugs before! And I'm in the US. Is that sad? When will we stop being so stubborn and just use metric units? And rename football to handball?

As for your problem, it really depends on what your teacher wants. Though I'm guessing that's kilograms and not slugs.

 

[rwisz]

It depends on the specific context of the problem. If the problem is asking for a solution in terms of force and displacement, then it would be appropriate to convert the given values to units of Newtons and meters. However, if the problem is only concerned with the relationship between the given values (such as finding the spring constant), then it may not be necessary to convert the units. It is important to carefully read and understand the problem before making any conversions.