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Hooke's Law LAB REPORT

This physics lab report explores whether a rubber band obeys Hooke's law for springs. The objectives are to identify the type and magnitude of deformation in the spring and calculate the spring constant. Two experiments are conducted, one with a rubber band and one with a spring. The results show the rubber band does not obey Hooke's law due to exceeding its elastic limit, while the spring shows non-constant behavior possibly due to experimental errors. The hypothesis that the rubber band would not obey the law while the spring would is partially confirmed.

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Omar Mustafa
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
580 views9 pages

Hooke's Law LAB REPORT

This physics lab report explores whether a rubber band obeys Hooke's law for springs. The objectives are to identify the type and magnitude of deformation in the spring and calculate the spring constant. Two experiments are conducted, one with a rubber band and one with a spring. The results show the rubber band does not obey Hooke's law due to exceeding its elastic limit, while the spring shows non-constant behavior possibly due to experimental errors. The hypothesis that the rubber band would not obey the law while the spring would is partially confirmed.

Uploaded by

Omar Mustafa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Physics Lab Report

Hooke’s law and a simple spring

Omar Nizar

Abdullah Rukaya

20/11/2020
Objectives and Purpose:
 explore whether a rubber band obeys Hooke's law for springs in actuality
 Identify the type and magnitude of deformation in the spring
 Calculate the spring constant for the elastic-band if applicable for different known
masses using the change in the length of the spring

Introduction and theory:


What is Hooke’s law and How can we identify a spring’s properties in terms of the science of
matter?
Any change in shape and/or size of a body is called deformation. The force that’s causing this
deformation is called a deforming force. Elastic deformation is when a body returns to its
original shape when the deforming force is removed. The force resisting the deformation is
called a restoring force.
When a body is in equilibrium Fres= Fdef

(Note that these the forces operate in opposite directions with equal magnitude)

As soon as the deforming force is removed the restoring force restores the body to its original
shape. Of course, this isn’t true for all deformations, many deformations result in permanently
changing the shape of the body. These deformations are called plastic deformations. Both types
of deformations generally accrue for all objects, their elastic limited (in simple terms: the
longest an object can stretch and still be able to return to its original form) depends on the
deforming force applied and on the properties of the material.
In 1660, Robert Hooke derived the Empirical Law which we call today Hooke’s law, it was
discovered through observations. Hooke's law applies to twisting and volume changes by
relating stresses and strains in a more advanced version (using e) and can be also applied to
very simple examples in one dimension whether vertically or horizontally it states that in a
spring the Deforming force is directly proportion to the change in length.

Fdef ∝ Δx
Through the law of proportionality, we can say that the deforming force is equal to the change
in length times some constant, let call this constant K

F=-KΔx
You might notice a negative sign was placed, that is because we are here, we are measuring the
restoring force which is the opposite of the deforming force as mentioned earlier

The force in a vertical spring is the gravitational force, using newton’s second law as we know
it’s calculated through Fg=mg and it is the deforming force. Figure one shows how the spring
looks when in its natural position, when it’s in equilibrium, and when it’s in motion.
Figure 1

Important notes:
All figures are labeled and cited in the last page of the report
Hypothesis is placed after data so it makes sense to the reader
Material Used:
 Spring
 Rubber band
 Ring stand
 Stand clamps
 Ruler
 Labeled masses
 C-clamp

Safety instructions:
Made sure area under the attacked weight is clear in case the weight falls
Assured that the stand was stable enough to withstand the weight added without moving

Procedure:
 Fixed the stand on the table and made sure it’s stable
 Constructed a table to record the mass, staring, ending position, force, and change in
position (stretch)
 Attached the rubber on the spring and added the mass to it
 Measured the length using a ruler from the start to the end of the rubber band
 Repeated the process for all masses
 Filled the table mentioned above
 Repeated the process without the rubber band (directly added the mass to the spring)
 Repeated the process for all masses
 Filled the constructed table
Data and analysis:
Deforming force: Gravitational Force
Type of deformation: elastic deformation (not mainly discussed in Results)
Known masses: Ranging from 39 to 500 grams
Spring constant: unknown

My Hypothesis:
Would be that the rubber band isn’t going to obey Hooke’s law, since the rubber band’s elastic
limit is low, the initial position of the rubber band is going to change and the ratio between the
gravitational force and the change is length isn’t going to be constant. In other words, if the
elastic limit for the rubber band is low, then the rubber band won’t obey Hooke's law. In the
case of the second experiment (Spring) I think it’s going to obey Hooke’s law and the spring
constant is going to be constant.

Data table 1:
The following table represents the length masses taken initially and after attaching the sets of
known masses to the rubber band. All forces are measured in Newtons. All mass numerical
values are in grams and limited to an uncertainty of ±0.01 grams. All lengths are measured in
millimeters and limited to an uncertainty of ±0.25 mm which very extreme but there to cover
all the systematic and random errors that are mentioned under the uncertainties section later.

Trial Mass Starting Final length Gravitational Stretch


grams length (mm) (mm) Force (N) (change in
(calculated) position)
1 39.4 90 93 386.12 3
2 60.9 90 107 596.82 17
3 81.5 90 112 798.7 22
4 107.1 90 122 1049.58 32
5 133.7 90 157 1310.26 67
6 150 90 204 1470 114
7 200 90 238 1960 148
8 240 90 274 2352 184

Data table 1 (Experiment 1: rubber band)


Graphs are shown in Results section

Data table 2:
The following table is similar to the previous one with the exception that it’s a different spring.
Measurements follow the same units and limits for uncertainties.
Trial Mass Starting Final length Gravitational Stretch (mm)
length Force (N)
1 50 75 84 490 9
2 150 75 94 1470 19
3 200 75 96.5 1960 21.5
4 250 75 105 2450 30
5 300 75 111 2940 36
6 350 75 114 3430 39
7 400 75 118 3920 43
8 450 75 121 4410 46
9 500 75 124 4900 49
Data table 2

Uncertainties errors:
These measurements are 100% accurate. There are many errors including human errors in
reading, systematic errors in the ruler and in the scale. The stand on which the springs were
attached kept bending downwards due to the large mass added. The elastic limit for the rubber
band is relatively low so it might have changed its initial position after adding a heavy weight.
Uncertainty calculations aren’t required as mentioned in the guide.
Results:
The springs changed in length when attaching different masses, the following graph shows the
stretch of the spring against the gravitational force

Experiment 2 (spring) Stretch against Force


The spring constant can be calculated by the proportionality of the stretch and the force, here
we can say that it is the slope of this graph. As we can see it’s not constant, this might be
because of errors we mentioned earlier, since this spring was made of copper, the probability
of the elastic limit being exceeded is unlikely. The main reason I think is responsible for this
contradiction is the systematic and random errors made by humans and systems. We can take
the average here but that won’t be as accurate.
Experiment 1 (rubber band) stretch against force
We can see the slope is not constant at all, but actually changes drastically unlike the first
figure. Errors and uncertainties of course have a play here, but the main reason for this would
be exceeding the elastic limit for the spring. This resulted in the initial position of the rubber
band changing which concluded to a catastrophic result. Unfortunately, we cannot calculate the
spring constant due to this change, even if we take the average it isn’t going to be accurate
Conclusion and reflection:
 My hypothesis was partially-correct since the spring constant wasn’t in fact constant
but that doesn’t mean that Hooke’s Law is incorrect since we have elastic limits and
uncertainties in play. For the second experiment, The Spring didn’t obey Hooke’s law as
expected, due to the same reasons excluding the elastic limit since the spring was made
of strong material
 Next time we should measure the initial position separately after every trial because it
might change
 We should start with the lighter weights before the heavier ones to make sure plastic
deformation doesn’t take place
 Springs obey Hooke’s law but elastic and plastic deformations should be given attention.

Work cited: (not in MLA because there isn’t enough information)


All graphs and tables were created by Omar Nizar through Excel
Figure 1 taken from https://sciencenotes.org/hookes-law-example-problem/

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