At what point on a roller coaster is the kinetic energy increasing?
1 answer:
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Answer:
The spring's maximum compression will be 2.0 cm
Explanation:
There are two energies in this problem, kinetic energy and elastic potential energy
(with m the mass, v the velocity, x the compression and k the spring constant. ) so the total mechanical energy at every moment is the sum of the two energies:
Here we have a situation where the total mechanical energy of the system is conserved because there are no dissipative forces (there's no friction), so:
Note that at the initial moment where the hockey puck has not compressed the spring all the energy of the system is kinetic energy, but for a momentary stop all the energy of the system is potential elastic energy, so we have:
(1)
Due conservation of energy the equality (1) has to be maintained, so if we let k and m constant x has to increase the same as v to maintain the equality. Therefore, if we increase velocity to 2v we have to increase compression to 2x to conserve the equality. This is 2(1.0) = 2.0 cm