Hooke's Law and the Simple Harmonic Motion of a Spring

Purpose: To determine the force of a spring and to study the motion of a spring and mass when vibrating under influence of gravity.

2. Make a plot of the downward force applied to the spring verses the displacement of the spring.

Spring vs. Displacement Graph

3. Create a table with data.

Data Table

Graph for m = 1050g

Conclusion: This lab was very difficult. We were supposed to use Hook's Law for this lab. I learned that the force and the displacement are inversely proportional. If one is increasing the other is decreasing. To make this lab better, it would be good to have learned Hook's Law first and then tried the lab. Some sources of error would be that the masses on the spring would get too close to the motion detector so it wouldn't read all of it.