Spring Force - Physics

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Question

A bowling ball is dropped from a height of onto a spring. If the spring is to compressed before halting the ball, what is the spring constant of the spring?

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Answer

This questions requires an understanding of the conversion of gravitational potential energy to potential energy stored in the compression of a spring. The ball's initial potential energy is where is the mass of the ball, is the acceleration due to gravity, and is the height of the ball. The energy stored in a compressed spring is where is the potential energy, is the spring constant (typically given in ) and is the compression of the spring. By setting the gravitational potential energy equal to the energy stored in the spring, we can solve for the spring constant :

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