Is it just me or does this make it look like physics is espionage?
Especially that last line. The drama.
What’s the Big Idea‽
Excuse me, what’s the big idea‽ How dare you ask such an insulting question on such an important mission. The big idea is that we have a limited time to determine what the spring constant of the dynamic cart’s plunger! There’s no time to waste!
Procedure
First question: what tools do we need to determine the spring constant we’re looking for? Well, we can use the formula F = -kx to do so. Therefore, we need to apply a force onto the cart and measure that force, measure the total displacement that it goes through.
To do so, we used the Vernier LabQuest, a force sensor (with a rubber attachment), a dynamics cart, a meterstick, and a calculator, set up as below:
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| The calculator’s role was especially important, albeit unorthodox. |
Next, we unlocked the plunger and pushed it against the force sensor to measure the amount of force applied, allowing it to go just far enough that the plunger doesn’t lock. A displacement of -0.028 m was measured using the meterstick, with the other data as follows:
The maximum force, as indicated by this graph, is 18.14 N, which corresponds to the maximum compression we obtained above. Next is simple substitution; just use the equation F = -kx and solve for k, then bam! You’ve got a value of 648 N/m for the cart’s spring constant.
Takeaways
A mission well done. We now know that our physics prowess is competent enough to calculate the spring constant of the dynamic cart’s plunger!
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