Lab #11 Conservation of Energy

Purpose: The purpose of this lab is for us to be able to see the energies that are working on the spring as it oscillates vertically on a mass spring system.

However, before we can start the actual experiment set up, we need figure out all of the energies that need to be found along with there derivations. Turns out that we need to find elastic potential energy, gravitational potential energy of the mass, kinetic energy of the mass, gravitational potential energy of the spring, and kinetic energy of the spring.

After that is figured out we were able to start recording actual data through logger pro. First thing we had to figure out was our spring constant.





This was accomplished by using the force sensor and stretching the spring slowly while it is attached. Then we graph the force vs position and use the best fit line to get the slope which is our spring constant. The spring constant is going to be needed in order for us to be able to graph the elastic potential energy.

Once that is finished we will actually run the experiment by letting the spring oscillate with a mass hanging at the bottom of it. This data will be used to make the several other calculated columns for elastic potential energy, gravitational potential energy of the mass, kinetic energy of the mass, gravitational potential energy of the spring, and kinetic energy of the spring. We use the formulas derived to put in each individual column.

Our end goal is to have a total energy graph. By graphing all of them in we were able to see if the energy of the spring is conserved. We can see this in the total energy graph by noticing that the graph neither loses or gains energy meaning it is conserved.