Lab #10 Work Kinetic Energy Theorem

Purpose: There were two different experiments in this lab. The first is meant to measure the work done on a certain system while the second is meant to measure the kinetic energy of the same system.

Expt 1: Work Done by a Nonconstant Spring Force

We accomplish this by setting a cart on a track then attaching a spring to the end. Then the other free end of the spring is attached to a force sensor. As you can see we have a weight under the spring. That is just meant to have it straighter and more at rest.





Then once that side is set up, on the other side there is a motion sensor that is connected to logger pro.








After the set up is complete we stretched the spring slowly in order to see the work done. The motion detector is meant to monitor the distance the spring is stretched to.

With the data collected we generate a force vs position graph. With this graph we use the best fit line to find the spring constant. Then we integrate it by finding the area under the graph. The integration is the all the work done on the spring.

Our spring constant being 5.724N/m and the work being done is 0.5007 Nm.

Expt 2:Kinetic Energy and the Work-Kinetic Energy Principle

The second part is the same set up as experiment 1. The difference with this one is that instead of stretching the spring slowly we will have the spring already stretched and have the cart spring back along with the rest of the system.

With this experiment we will be able to find out the work done by the spring itself. Then after that is done we graph it the same as before then integrate in order to find the work. However, for this graph we are going to add in kinetic energy just as an extra comparison. In order to get kinetic energy we had to add an extra calculated column then include it on the graph.

We have three graphs at different positions in order for us to see that the work is consistent throughout the whole system. Since kinetic energy and force are very different we had a major source of error somewhere in our experiment.