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Blog OffInMyOwnWorld

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Springs, etc.


So I was only in class for two days this week, and they were some of the most frustrating 42 minutes of my life. The mystery mass lab got the best of our group on several occasions, but I'm glad to say we finally figured out two ways to find the mass of the cart. I think what made it most frustrating for me was the fact that we did this same lab last year, and I remember it being MUCH easier.

Our frustrations were set to ease as soon as we found out that we were allowed to use springs to find the mass; after that it was pretty simple. One method was to find the spring constant of our spring by measuring the displacement of it with a known force and then using the equation k=F/x. Then, we put the cart on the spring, measured the displacement there, and used the same equation to find the force (weight) of the cart.

Also, we used the equation for period of a spring oscillator to find the mass, using the equation T=2pi(m/k)^(1/2). We used a stopwatch to find the period, and then solved for the mass.

Until next week physics world....

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