Using Hooke's Law to Understand Materials
Students explore the response of springs to forces as a way to begin to understand elastic solid behavior. They gain experience in data collection, spring constant calculation, and comparison and interpretation of graphs and material properties to elucidate material behavior. Conduct this activity before proceeding to the associated lesson.
Hooke's law is based on the properties and behavior of springs.Copyright Qz10, Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Springs_009.jpg
Material selection is a vital step of the engineering design process when creating any type of device. The strength and stiffness of materials can dictate how they respond to forces applied during device operation. Therefore, understanding the properties of the selected materials contributes to the success of a device. Tensile testing, as done in this activity to calculate spring stiffness, is one method of determining material properties.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Calculate the spring constant, k, of multiple springs.
- Graph collected data using Microsoft Excel.
- Use Microsoft Excel to fit data with a trend line and equation to interpret the meaning of the coefficients in the equation.