The discussion revolves around the differences in spring constants obtained through two methods: Hooke's Law and the oscillation method. The original poster reports differing values for the spring constant, prompting questions about measurement accuracy and potential systematic errors.
Participants have provided insights into the nature of the measurements and the potential for error. There is an ongoing exploration of which method may yield a more accurate spring constant, with suggestions to consider the accuracy of the tools used for measurement.
The original poster performed only one measurement with each method, which raises concerns about the reliability of the results. The discussion also notes the challenges associated with measuring the oscillation period accurately.
Thanks! Yeah I just performed one measurement with each method.kuruman said:The spring constant is, as the name implies, a constant that is independent of your method of measuring it. You got different values probably because of some systematic error in your measurements. Only you know what you did and how you did it, so you are best qualified to figure out which value you tthink is more accurate. Did you perform one measurement with each method or are these numbers averages of many measurements with each method? For all I know, the values that you got are within the uncertainty of your measurements.
Which one do you trust most? Which one leaves ore room for error? Next time try to make more than one measuements. This will give you a better idea of how bunched together your measurements are.VitaminK said:Thanks! Yeah I just performed one measurement with each method.
kuruman said:Which one do you trust most? Which one leaves ore room for error? Next time try to make more than one measuements. This will give you a better idea of how bunched together your measurements are.
Don't you have to also take account of the oscillation period? For me, measuring time manually through a stopwatch, for example, is way untrustworthy than measuring a distance with a meter stick, because of our reflexes.VitaminK said:Well I'd say the oscillating-method is more trustworthy, since it only depends on one variable (mass) that can be measured more accurately than the elongation x in F=kx. But i don't know if this is true?
I am guessing that for the oscillating method you also had to measure the period. How accurately did you measure that? What did you use? Depending on what you used, either method could be accurate than the other. For example, a photogate is more accurate than the timer app on your smartphone for timing oscillations; a transit level is more accurate than a meter stickr for measuring distances. Only you can estimate the accuracy what you did because you were there and I was not.VitaminK said:Well I'd say the oscillating-method is more trustworthy, since it only depends on one variable (mass) that can be measured more accurately than the elongation x in F=kx. But i don't know if this is true?
kuruman said:I am guessing that for the oscillating method you also had to measure the period. How accurately did you measure that? What did you use? Depending on what you used, either method could be accurate than the other. For example, a photogate is more accurate than the timer app on your smartphone for timing oscillations; a transit level is more accurate than a meter stickr for measuring distances. Only you can estimate the accuracy what you did because you were there and I was not.
A crude way to do that would be to say something like, "I measured the length to be 10.3 cm, but it could be as little as 10.1 or as big as 10.5 because of parallax effects and because couldn't exactly gauge where the beginning and the end of the length was." Now that you have these brackets, recalculate the spring constant using the low and high value for x to find a high and low value for the spring constant. Then do the same type thing for the time measurement considering how you did it. See if there is a overlap of the values measured by the two methods.