Applying Hooke's Law to Cancer Detection
Students investigate Hooke's LawCopyright 2013 Svjo, Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mass-spring-system.png
Students explore Hooke's law while working in small groups at their lab benches. They collect displacement data for springs with unknown spring constants, k, by adding various masses of known weight. After exploring Hooke's law and answering a series of application questions, students apply their new understanding to explore a tissue of known surface area. Students then use the necessary relationships to depict a cancerous tumor amidst normal tissue by creating a graph in Microsoft Excel.
Hooke's law defines the direct proportionality between a spring's deformation and the restoring force that results. Most commonly, a derivative of Hooke's law is used in engineering applications—a relationship that directly relates stress and strain. For example, the stress-strain curve is commonly used by material scientists and engineers while selecting materials for structures. Within the linear region, the slope is defined by the Young's modulus of elasticity. Civil engineers often study the stress-strain curve when using strain hardening and other methods to increase the yield strength of a material. In this activity, particularly in the investigating questions 6 and 7, students explore the relationship between Hooke's law and the stress-strain equation. In addition, students must apply their understanding of Hooke's law to create a strain plot.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Describe what is meant by Hooke's law.
- Apply Hooke's law relationships to analyzing tissue of a known surface area.
- Depict a cancerous tumor using graphing methods in Microsoft Excel.