Lab 8: Work on a spring

We are going to try to find the work that acts on a spring when a hanging mass is attached to the spring.

First we measure the length of the string stretched and the non-stretched. Using this data, we will calculate the constant of the spring. Afterwards we use the motion sensor to get GPE, EPE, KPE, and the total energy. 

the data of all our energies

this is the graph of the position of the spring vs time

This graphs is very unclear but shows all the energies that are in the system.

These are the calculations of how we derived which energies are going to be in the graph.

First we derived all the energies that were going to be in the lab and their respective equations. Then we calculated the spring constant by getting the position of the spring stretched vs non-stretched. We then used a motion sensor and logger pro and inserted all the equations we derived to get EPE, KPE, GPE, total energy. Our lab was for the most part successful as we were able to show all the energies present in the spring. Unfortunately, the total energy was quite a bit off.