The discussion revolves around understanding Hook's Law in the context of a spring being compressed by a force. The original poster presents a problem involving a spring with a specified spring constant and force applied, questioning the relevance of the original length of the spring and the implications of the negative sign in Hook's Law.
The discussion is ongoing with participants providing insights into the nature of Hook's Law and the factors that influence the force exerted by a spring. There is an exploration of different interpretations regarding the relevance of the spring's original length and the meaning of the variables in the equation.
Participants are operating under the assumption that the spring follows Hookean behavior, and there is a focus on the relationship between force and displacement without resolving the final length of the spring after compression.
Let's turn it around, why do you think that the unstretched spring should matter? Does an unstretched spring exert a force?Gear2d said:Why doesn't the length of the original spring matter here? Also, how does the "-" sign affect Hook's Law here in this problem.
Hootenanny said:Let's turn it around, why do you think that the unstretched spring should matter? Does an unstretched spring exert a force?
The negative sign simply indicates that the force exerted by the spring is in the opposite direction to the compression/extension.
Yes, the force exerted by a [hookean] spring depends only on the displacement from it's natural length. The 'delta x' in Hooke's law represents the change in length of the spring, the initial and final lengths of the string are irrelevant.Gear2d said:What you are saying is that here they are looking for how much the spring was compressed by, not the final length of the spring after compression (which is 20cm?).
Hootenanny said:Yes, the force exerted by a [hookean] spring depends only on the displacement from it's natural length. The 'delta x' in Hooke's law represents the change in length of the spring, the initial and final lengths of the string are irrelevant.