Hooke's Law and the Harmonic Oscillator Documents

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Main Document

HOOKE’S LAW AND THE HARMONIC OSCILLATOR 

written by Adrian Fernandez-Gavela, Cristina Gonzalez-Gago, and M. A. Cerdeira

When a mass hanging from a spring is separated a small distance from the equilibrium position, it oscillates under the action of a restoring force proportional to the distance to the equilibrium point. It can be verified that, in this situation, the mass describes a simple harmonic motion.
To study the restoring forces and the resulting motion we used a vertically hanging spring with a mass holder at the bottom. The oscillation motion of the different hanging masses is recorded, and the videos are analyzed with Tracker to obtain the respective trajectories.

Last Modified July 22, 2021

Primary Documents

SHO TRZ 

A Tracker Experiment file with a high speed MP4 video clip and trk data file showing how to analyze a mass attached to vertically hanging spring.

Last Modified April 27, 2023

This file has previous versions.

Supplemental Documents

Mass and Spring Video 

The video used by mass and spring experiment.

Last Modified April 20, 2023