# A Springy Thingy, Part 2

So last time, I presented the equation that describes the position of a mass on a spring:

The equation is

${x}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}{A}\hspace{0.33em}\sin\left({\frac{180t}{\mathit{\pi}}\sqrt{\frac{k}{m}}}\right)$

where x is the position of the mass at a given time t in seconds, k is the spring constant, and m is the mass in kg. This was developed from the equation that describes the forces on the spring (gravity and the spring), and through calculus, out pops the equation above. This equation is the sine of stuff in brackets multiplied by a number A.

Even though the stuff in the brackets looks rather ominous, we are still just taking the sine of it and the sine only goes from -1 to 1. So the maximum extent of the mass is from –A to A. Now let’s look at the stuff in the brackets.

The 180 and 𝜋 are just there to change the rest of the expression so that you can press the sine button on your calculator in the “degrees” mode. Normally, when engineers model something like this, they use radians and not degrees. I have not explained what radians are yet so I’ve included an adjustment (the 180 and the 𝜋) so that you can continue to use degrees. I think I’ll explain radians in my next post.

The rest of the numbers, t, k, and m are the real meat of the model. For simplicity, I have started time at 0 seconds when the mass is at its rest position and is moving upwards in the postive direction. So you would expect the position of the mass to change with time and that is what the t in the expression does. The k and the m determine how fast or how slowly the mass oscillates. Let’s actually use some numbers instead of letters here for a specific mass and spring.

Now let’s assume the spring has a spring constant of 1 kg/s² (I’ll discuss these units in my next post), and the mass connected to it is 1 kg. That means the stuff in the square root sign (called a radical) is just 1 and the square root of 1 is 1. And let’s further assume that I start the spring moving by stretching the spring 5 cm from its rest position. So now, the position equation above simplifies to

${x}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}{5}\sin\left({\frac{180t}{\mathit{\pi}}}\right)$

Starting at time as 0, you can choose various values of t, compute the stuff in the brackets, use the “SIN” button on your calculator which is in the “degrees” mode, and then multiply by 5. So for example, at t = 1 sec, 180/𝜋 is 57.2958. Taking the sine of that gives 0.8415 and then multiplying that by 5 gives 4.2073 cm. So at 1 sec, the mass is 4.2073 cm above its resting position. You can plot this point and many others to graph this, or you can be lazy like me and use a graphing calculator. The graph of the position of the mass versus time for this scenario is

So no surprise, a sine wave. Now remember when I first talked about sine waves, I talked about the wavelength. Here I have indicated the wavelength as 6.28 sec. When dealing with time, the wavelength is called the period and usually represented with the symbol T. The period is the length of time it takes for one full cycle of motion. So it takes the mass 6.28 seconds to make one complete bounce. It turns out that you do not have to graph the curve to find this:

${T}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}\frac{{2}\mathit{\pi}}{\sqrt{\frac{k}{m}}}$

Since our k and m are each 1, T in this case is just 2𝜋. Funny how 𝜋 keeps cropping up. Again, I’ll explain that in my next post on radians.

Associated with the period is something called frequency. The period is how long it takes for one complete cycle to occur, whereas the frequency is how many complete cycles occur in 1 second. Frequency is the reciprocal of the period and vice versa. That is f = 1/T. So for our mass, the frequency is 1/6.28 or 0.16 cycles per second. The term “cycles per second” is given a special unit called hertz which is abbreviated as hz. You may have heard this term before.

As you change the values of k and m, the values of T and f will change as well. If the spring gets stiffer (a higher k), you would expect the frequency to increase, that is it will bounce faster. You would expect a heavier mass to slow down the frequency and it does. I will leave it as an exercise for the student to check this using a graphing calculator or Excel.

A good simulation on the web that shows the effect of changing mass an spring constant is at https://www.physicsclassroom.com/Physics-Interactives/Waves-and-Sound/Mass-on-a-Spring/Mass-on-a-Spring-Interactive. This sets up the graph a bit differently than I do here, but the frequency changes are easy to see. Also, you can add damping to this which I did not include in this post to keep it simple, but you can play with that as well on this site.