written by Wolfgang Christian

The Block and Spring on an Inclined Plane model shows the dynamics of a mass-spring system sliding on an inclined plane with static and kinetic friction.  It is a supplemental simulation for  "Damped oscillations and equilibrium in a mass-spring system subject to sliding friction forces" in the American Journal of Physics 78(11), 1120-1127 (2010) by P. Onorato, D. Mascoli, and A. DeAmbrosis and has been approved by the authors and the American Journal of Physics (AJP) editor.

The model displays the numerical solution to the equations of motion and shows how the forces change as the mass slides.  Users can set the coefficients of friction and the spring constant. The model plots the position, velocity, and net force on the mass as a function of time as the system evolves and in order to show the asymmetry caused by the change in direction of the frictional force when sliding up and down the incline and the importance of friction in establishing equilibrium.  

The Block and Spring on an Inclined Plane model was created using the Easy Java Simulations (EJS) modeling tool.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.  Double clicking the ejs_mech_newton_BlockAndSpringOnInclinedPlane.jar file will run the program if Java is installed.

• Download ejs_mech_newton_law_BlockAndSpringOnInclinedPlane.jar - 1241kb Java Archive File

Last Modified June 2, 2014

This file has previous versions.

The source code zip archive contains an XML representation of the Block and Spring on an Inclined Plane model.   Unzip this archive in your EJS workspace to compile and run this model using EJS.

• Download ejs_mech_newton_BlockAndSpringOnInclinedPlane.zip - 17kb Compressed File

Last Modified June 10, 2010