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The Motion Of A Spring Released From Uniform Circular Motion Documents

This material has 8 associated documents. Select a document title to view a document's information.

Main Document

The Motion Of A Spring Released From Uniform Circular Motion 

written by Tom Dooling, Aaron Titus, Jeffrey Register, and Matt Carnaghi

A weak spring is connected at one end to a rotor turning at constant angular velocity. The spring extends to a stretched length as determined by the spring mass, rest length, spring constant, rotor radius and rotor angular velocity. When released from the rotor, the inner end of the spring pulls away as expected, causing a wave to travel down the spring as it collapses. During this time
interval, the outer end of the spring continues to move along its original circular path in uniform circular motion, as if the spring were still connected to the rotor. This is analogous to the effect of
a hanging Slinky released from rest whose bottom end remains at a fixed position above the ground until a wave from the top of the Slinky reaches the bottom of the Slinky.

Last Modified August 19, 2015

Supplemental Documents (7)

Springs Released From Uniform Circular Motion Poster 

by Matthew Carnaghi and Aaron Titus (High Point University), Tom Dooling (UNC Pembroke), Jeff Regester (Greensboro Day School)

A poster presented at the NC AAPT Section Meeting describing the experiment.

Last Modified August 21, 2015

Supplemental Data and Graphs 

Supplemental data and graphs to accompany the article describing the Rotating Spring Experiment.

Last Modified August 21, 2015

Rotating Spring TRZ 

A Tracker experiment file showing the motion of a spring after it is released
from a rotating turntable.  Open this archive using the Tracker video modeling tool.

Last Modified April 20, 2023

This file has previous versions.

Rotating Slinky TRZ 

A Tracker experiment file showing the motion of a slinky after it is released
from a rotating turntable.  Open this archive using the Tracker video modeling tool.

Last Modified April 20, 2023

This file has previous versions.

Rotating Spring Video 

A video clip showing the motion of a spring after it is released
from a rotating turntable.

Last Modified August 21, 2015

EJS Rotating Spring Simulation 

An EJS Java simulation showing and analyzing the motion of a spring released from a rotating turntable.

Last Modified August 23, 2015

This file has previous versions.

EJS Rotating Slinky Simulation 

An EJS Java simulation showing and analyzing the motion of a slinky released from a rotating turntable.

Last Modified August 23, 2015

This file has previous versions.

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