Elastic Potential Energy of Springs—It’s Tiggerific!
Potential energy can be stored in springs.Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399 USA. All rights reserved.
Who doesn't love bouncing?! Students investigate potential energy held within springs (elastic potential energy) as part of the Research and Revise step. Class begins with a video of spring shoes or bungee jumping. Then students move on into notes and problems as a group. A few questions are given as homework. The Test Your Mettle section concludes. The lesson includes a dry lab that involves pogo sticks to solidify the concepts of spring potential energy, kinetic energy and gravitational energy, as well as conservation of energy.
The conversion of kinetic and gravitational potential energy to elastic potential energy is important for many engineers. Biomedical engineers must know about the elasticity of blood vessels. Mechanical and civil engineers must know the elasticity of materials and how much movement that elasticity can create.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Apply the law of conservation of energy to the use of springs to physics problems in one dimension.
- Explain why mechanical energy is not always conserved with a spring.