Springs: Oscillation and Harmonic Motion
Springs: Oscillation and Harmonic Motion
Springs: Oscillation and Harmonic Motion
Questions about springs on SAT II Physics are usually simple matters of a mass on a spring oscillating back and forth.
However, spring motion is the most interesting of the four topics we will cover here because of its generality.
The harmonic motion that springs exhibit applies equally to objects moving in a circular path and to the various wave
phenomena that well study later in this book. So before we dig in to the nitty-gritty of your typical SAT II Physics
spring questions, lets look at some general features of harmonic motion.
Oscillation and Harmonic Motion
Consider the following physical phenomena:
When you drop a rock into a still pond, the rock makes a big splash, which causes ripples to spread out to the edges of the pond.
When you pluck a guitar string, the string vibrates back and forth.
When you rock a small boat, it wobbles to and fro in the water before coming to rest again.
When you stretch out a spring and release it, the spring goes back and forth between being compressed and being stretched out.
There are just a few examples of the widespread phenomenon of oscillation. Oscillation is the natural worlds way of
returning a system to its equilibrium position, the stable position of the system where the net force acting on it is zero.
If you throw a system off-balance, it doesnt simply return to the way it was; it oscillates back and forth about the
equilibrium position.
A system oscillates as a way of giving off energy. A system that is thrown off-kilter has more energy than a system in
its equilibrium position. To take the simple example of a spring, a stretched-out spring will start to move as soon as
you let go of it: that motion is evidence of kinetic energy that the spring lacks in its equilibrium position. Because of
the law of conservation of energy, a stretched-out spring cannot simply return to its equilibrium position; it must
release some energy in order to do so. Usually, this energy is released as thermal energy caused by friction, but there
are plenty of interesting exceptions. For instance, a plucked guitar string releases sound energy: the music we hear is
the result of the string returning to its equilibrium position.
The movement of an oscillating body is called harmonic motion. If you were to graph the position, velocity, or
acceleration of an oscillating body against time, the result would be a sinusoidal wave; that is, some variation of
a y = a sin bx or a y = a cos bxgraph. This generalized form of harmonic motion applies not only to springs and guitar
strings, but to anything that moves in a cycle. Imagine placing a pebble on the edge of a turntable, and watching the
turntable rotate while looking at it from the side. You will see the pebble moving back and forth in one dimension.
The pebble will appear to oscillate just like a spring: it will appear to move fastest at the middle of its trajectory and
slow to a halt and reverse direction as it reaches the edge of its trajectory.
This example serves two purposes. First, it shows you that the oscillation of springs is just one of a wide range of
phenomena exhibiting harmonic motion. Anything that moves in a cyclic pattern exhibits harmonic motion. This
includes the light and sound waves without which we would have a lot of trouble moving about in the world. Second,
we bring it up because SAT II Physics has been known to test students on the nature of the horizontal or vertical
component of the motion of an object in circular motion. As you can see, circular motion viewed in one dimension is
harmonic motion.
Though harmonic motion is one of the most widespread and important of physical phenomena, your understanding
of it will not be taxed to any great extent on SAT II Physics. In fact, beyond the motion of springs and pendulums,
everything you will need to know will be covered in this book in the chapter on Waves. The above discussion is mostly
meant to fit your understanding of the oscillation of springs into a wider context.
The Oscillation of a Spring
Now lets focus on the harmonic motion exhibited by a spring. To start with, well imagine a mass, m, placed on a
frictionless surface, and attached to a wall by a spring. In its equilibrium position, where no forces act upon it, the
mass is at rest. Lets label this equilibrium position x = 0. Intuitively, you know that if you compress or stretch out the
spring it will begin to oscillate.
Suppose you push the mass toward the wall, compressing the spring, until the mass is in position .
When you release the mass, the spring will exert a force, pushing the mass back until it reaches position ,
which is called the amplitude of the springs motion, or the maximum displacement of the oscillator. Note
that .
By that point, the spring will be stretched out, and will be exerting a force to pull the mass back in toward the wall.
Because we are dealing with an idealized frictionless surface, the mass will not be slowed by the force of friction, and
will oscillate back and forth repeatedly between and .
Hookes Law
This is all well and good, but we cant get very far in sorting out the amplitude, the velocity, the energy, or anything
else about the masss motion if we dont understand the manner in which the spring exerts a force on the mass
attached to it. The force, F, that the spring exerts on the mass is defined by Hookes Law:
where x is the springs displacement from its equilibrium position and k is a constant of proportionality called
the spring constant. The spring constant is a measure of springiness: a greater value for k signifies a tighter spring,
one that is more resistant to being stretched.
Hookes Law tells us that the further the spring is displaced from its equilibrium position (x) the greater the force the
spring will exert in the direction of its equilibrium position (F ). We call F a restoring force: it is always directed toward
equilibrium. Because F and x are directly proportional, a graph of F vs. x is a line with slope k.
Simple Harmonic Oscillation
A mass oscillating on a spring is one example of a simple harmonic oscillator. Specifically, a simple harmonic oscillator
is any object that moves about a stable equilibrium point and experiences a restoring force proportional to the
oscillators displacement.
For an oscillating spring, the restoring force, and consequently the acceleration, are greatest and positive at .
These quantities decrease as x approaches the equilibrium position and are zero at x = 0. The restoring force and
accelerationwhich are now negativeincrease in magnitude as x approaches and are maximally negative
at .
Important Properties of a Mass on a Spring
There are a number of important properties related to the motion of a mass on a spring, all of which are fair game for
SAT II Physics. Remember, though: the test makers have no interest in testing your ability to recall complex formulas
and perform difficult mathematical operations. You may be called upon to know the simpler of these formulas, but
not the complex ones. As we mentioned at the end of the section on pulleys, its less important that you memorize the
formulas and more important that you understand what they mean. If you understand the principle, there probably
wont be any questions that will stump you.
Period of Oscillation
The period of oscillation, T, of a spring is the amount of time it takes for a spring to complete a round-trip or cycle.
Mathematically, the period of oscillation of a simple harmonic oscillator described by Hookes Law is:
This equation tells us that as the mass of the block, m, increases and the spring constant, k, decreases, the period
increases. In other words, a heavy mass attached to an easily stretched spring will oscillate back and forth very slowly,
while a light mass attached to a resistant spring will oscillate back and forth very quickly.
Frequency
The frequency of the springs motion tells us how quickly the object is oscillating, or how many cycles it completes in a
given timeframe. Frequency is inversely proportional to period:
Frequency is given in units of cycles per second, or hertz (Hz).
Potential Energy
The potential energy of a spring ( ) is sometimes called elastic energy, because it results from the spring being
stretched or compressed. Mathematically, is defined by:
The potential energy of a spring is greatest when the coil is maximally compressed or stretched, and is zero at the
equilibrium position.
Kinetic Energy
SAT II Physics will not test you on the motion of springs involving friction, so for the purposes of the test, the
mechanical energy of a spring is a conserved quantity. As we recall, mechanical energy is the sum of the kinetic energy
and potential energy.
At the points of maximum compression and extension, the velocity, and hence the kinetic energy, is zero and the
mechanical energy is equal to the potential energy, Us=
1
/ 2 .
At the equilibrium position, the potential energy is zero, and the velocity and kinetic energy are maximized. The
kinetic energy at the equilibrium position is equal to the mechanical energy:
From this equation, we can derive the maximum velocity:
You wont need to know this equation, but it might be valuable to note that the velocity increases with a large
displacement, a resistant spring, and a small mass.
Summary
It is highly unlikely that the formulas discussed above will appear on SAT II Physics. More likely, you will be asked
conceptual questions such as: at what point in a springs oscillation is the kinetic or potential energy maximized or
minimized, for instance. The figure below summarizes and clarifies some qualitative aspects of simple harmonic
oscillation. Your qualitative understanding of the relationship between force, velocity, and kinetic and potential
energy in a spring system is far more likely to be tested than your knowledge of the formulas discussed above.
In this figure, v represents velocity, F represents force, KE represents kinetic energy, and represents potential
energy.
Vertical Oscillation of Springs
Now lets consider a mass attached to a spring that is suspended from the ceiling. Questions of this sort have a nasty
habit of coming up on SAT II Physics. The oscillation of the spring when compressed or extended wont be any
different, but we now have to take gravity into account.
Equilibrium Position
Because the mass will exert a gravitational force to stretch the spring downward a bit, the equilibrium position will no
longer be at x = 0, but at x = h, where h is the vertical displacement of the spring due to the gravitational pull exerted
on the mass. The equilibrium position is the point where the net force acting on the mass is zero; in other words, the
point where the upward restoring force of the spring is equal to the downward gravitational force of the mass.
Combining the restoring force, F = kh, and the gravitational force, F = mg, we can solve for h:
Since m is in the numerator and k in the denominator of the fraction, the mass displaces itself more if it has a large
weight and is suspended from a lax spring, as intuition suggests.
A Vertical Spring in Motion
If the spring is then stretched a distance d, where d < h, it will oscillate between
and .
Throughout the motion of the mass, the force of gravity is constant and downward. The restoring force of the spring is
always upward, because even at the mass is below the springs initial equilibrium position of x = 0. Note that
if d were greater thanh, would be above x = 0, and the restoring force would act in the downward direction until
the mass descended once more below x = 0.
According to Hookes Law, the restoring force decreases in magnitude as the spring is compressed. Consequently, the
net force downward is greatest at and the net force upward is greatest at .
Energy
The mechanical energy of the vertically oscillating spring is:
where is gravitational potential energy and is the springs (elastic) potential energy.
Note that the velocity of the block is zero at and , and maximized at the equilibrium position, x
= h. Consequently, the kinetic energy of the spring is zero for and and is greatest at x = h.
The gravitational potential energy of the system increases with the height of the mass. The elastic potential energy of
the spring is greatest when the spring is maximally extended at and decreases with the extension of the spring.
How This Knowledge Will Be Tested
Most of the questions on SAT II Physics that deal with spring motion will ask qualitatively about the energy or
velocity of a vertically oscillating spring. For instance, you may be shown a diagram capturing one moment in a
springs trajectory and asked about the relative magnitudes of the gravitational and elastic potential energies and
kinetic energy. Or you may be asked at what point in a springs trajectory the velocity is maximized. The answer, of
course, is that it is maximized at the equilibrium position. It is far less likely that you will be asked a question that
involves any sort of calculation.
A childs toy that is made to shoot ping pong balls consists of a tube, a spring (k = 18 N/m) and a catch for
the spring that can be released to shoot the balls. When a ball is loaded into the tube, it compresses the
spring 9.5 cm. If you shoot a ping pong ball straight up out of this toy, how high will it go?
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