(a) 907.5 N/m
The force applied to the spring is equal to the weight of the object suspended on it, so:
The spring obeys Hook's law:
where k is the spring constant and is the stretching of the spring. Since we know , we can re-arrange the equation to find the spring constant:
(b) 1.45 cm
In this second case, the force applied to the spring will be different, since the weight of the new object is different:
So, by applying Hook's law again, we can find the new stretching of the spring (using the value of the spring constant that we found in the previous part):
(c) 3.5 J
The amount of work that must be done to stretch the string by a distance is equal to the elastic potential energy stored by the spring, given by:
Substituting k=907.5 N/m and , we find the amount of work that must be done: