Problems & Exercises

It is weigh-in time for the local under-85-kg rugby team. The bathroom scale used to assess eligibility can be described by Hooke’s law and is depressed 0.75 cm by its maximum load of 120 kg. (a) What is the spring’s effective spring constant? (b) A player stands on the scales and depresses it by 0.48 cm. Is he eligible to play on this under-85 kg team?

(a) The springs of a pickup truck act like a single spring with a force constant of $1\text{.}\text{30}\times {\text{10}}^5\text{N/m}$. By how much will the truck be depressed by its maximum load of 1000 kg?

(b) If the pickup truck has four identical springs, what is the force constant of each?

A spring has a length of 0.200 m when a 0.300-kg mass hangs from it, and a length of 0.750 m when a 1.95-kg mass hangs from it. (a) What is the force constant of the spring? (b) What is the unloaded length of the spring?

If the spring constant of a simple harmonic oscillator is doubled, by what factor will the mass of the system need to change in order for the frequency of the motion to remain the same?

By how much leeway (both percentage and mass) would you have in the selection of the mass of the object in the previous problem if you did not wish the new period to be greater than 2.01 s or less than 1.99 s?

Suppose you attach the object with mass $m$ to a vertical spring originally at rest, and let it bounce up and down. You release the object from rest at the spring’s original rest length. (a) Show that the spring exerts an upward force of $2.00\mathrm{mg}$ on the object at its lowest point. (b) If the spring has a force constant of $\text{10}\text{.}0\text{N/m}$ and a 0.25-kg-mass object is set in motion as described, find the amplitude of the oscillations. (c) Find the maximum velocity.

Suppose a diving board with no one on it bounces up and down in a simple harmonic motion with a frequency of 4.00 Hz. The board has an effective mass of 10.0 kg. What is the frequency of the simple harmonic motion of a 75.0-kg diver on the board?

Some people think a pendulum with a period of 1.00 s can be driven with “mental energy” or psycho kinetically, because its period is the same as an average heartbeat. True or not, what is the length of such a pendulum?

How long does it take a child on a swing to complete one swing if her center of gravity is 4.00 m below the pivot?

Two parakeets sit on a swing with their combined center of mass 10.0 cm below the pivot. At what frequency do they swing?

A pendulum with a period of 2.00000 s in one location $\left(g=9\text{.}\text{80}{\text{m/s}}^2\right)$ is moved to a new location where the period is now 1.99796 s. What is the acceleration due to gravity at its new location?

Find the ratio of the new/old periods of a pendulum if the pendulum were transported from Earth to the Moon, where the acceleration due to gravity is $1\text{.}\text{63}{\text{m/s}}^2$.

Suppose the length of a clock’s pendulum is changed by 1.000%, exactly at noon one day. What time will it read 24.00 hours later, assuming it the pendulum has kept perfect time before the change? Note that there are two answers, and perform the calculation to four-digit precision.

A novelty clock has a 0.0100-kg mass object bouncing on a spring that has a force constant of 1.25 N/m. What is the maximum velocity of the object if the object bounces 3.00 cm above and below its equilibrium position? (b) How many joules of kinetic energy does the object have at its maximum velocity?

A ladybug sits 12.0 cm from the center of a Beatles music album spinning at 33.33 rpm. What is the maximum velocity of its shadow on the wall behind the turntable, if illuminated parallel to the record by the parallel rays of the setting Sun?

The amplitude of a lightly damped oscillator decreases by $3\text{.}\mathrm{0\%}$ during each cycle. What percentage of the mechanical energy of the oscillator is lost in each cycle?

If a car has a suspension system with a force constant of $5\text{.}\text{00}\times {\text{10}}^4\text{N/m}$, how much energy must the car’s shocks remove to dampen an oscillation starting with a maximum displacement of 0.0750 m?

Suppose you have a 0.750-kg object on a horizontal surface connected to a spring that has a force constant of 150 N/m. There is simple friction between the object and surface with a static coefficient of friction ${\mu }_{\text{s}}=0\text{.}\text{100}$. (a) How far can the spring be stretched without moving the mass? (b) If the object is set into oscillation with an amplitude twice the distance found in part (a), and the kinetic coefficient of friction is ${\mu }_{\text{k}}=0\text{.}\text{0850}$, what total distance does it travel before stopping? Assume it starts at the maximum amplitude.

Waves on a swimming pool propagate at 0.750 m/s. You splash the water at one end of the pool and observe the wave go to the opposite end, reflect, and return in 30.0 s. How far away is the other end of the pool?

How many times a minute does a boat bob up and down on ocean waves that have a wavelength of 40.0 m and a propagation speed of 5.00 m/s?

What is the wavelength of the waves you create in a swimming pool if you splash your hand at a rate of 2.00 Hz and the waves propagate at 0.800 m/s?

Radio waves transmitted through space at $3\text{.}\text{00}\times {\text{10}}^8\text{m/s}$ by the Voyager spacecraft have a wavelength of 0.120 m. What is their frequency?

(a) Seismographs measure the arrival times of earthquakes with a precision of 0.100 s. To get the distance to the epicenter of the quake, they compare the arrival times of S- and P-waves, which travel at different speeds. Figure 16.44) If S- and P-waves travel at 4.00 and 7.20 km/s, respectively, in the region considered, how precisely can the distance to the source of the earthquake be determined? (b) Seismic waves from underground detonations of nuclear bombs can be used to locate the test site and detect violations of test bans. Discuss whether your answer to (a) implies a serious limit to such detection. (Note also that the uncertainty is greater if there is an uncertainty in the propagation speeds of the S- and P-waves.)

Figure 16.44 A seismograph as described in above problem.(credit: Oleg Alexandrov)

The middle-C hammer of a piano hits two strings, producing beats of 1.50 Hz. One of the strings is tuned to 260.00 Hz. What frequencies could the other string have?

Twin jet engines on an airplane are producing an average sound frequency of 4100 Hz with a beat frequency of 0.500 Hz. What are their individual frequencies?

Three adjacent keys on a piano (F, F-sharp, and G) are struck simultaneously, producing frequencies of 349, 370, and 392 Hz. What beat frequencies are produced by this discordant combination?

The low-frequency speaker of a stereo set has a surface area of $0\text{.}\text{05}{\text{m}}^2$ and produces 1W of acoustical power. What is the intensity at the speaker? If the speaker projects sound uniformly in all directions, at what distance from the speaker is the intensity $0\text{.}1{\text{W/m}}^2$?

Engineering Application

A device called an insolation meter is used to measure the intensity of sunlight has an area of 100 cm² and registers 6.50 W. What is the intensity in ${\text{W/m}}^2$?

Engineering Application

(a) A photovoltaic array of (solar cells) is 10.0% efficient in gathering solar energy and converting it to electricity. If the average intensity of sunlight on one day is $700{\text{W/m}}^2,$ what area should your array have to gather energy at the rate of 100 W? (b) What is the maximum cost of the array if it must pay for itself in two years of operation averaging 10.0 hours per day? Assume that it earns money at the rate of 9.00 ¢ per kilowatt-hour.

Medical Application

(a) What is the intensity in ${\text{W/m}}^2$ of a laser beam used to burn away cancerous tissue that, when 90.0% absorbed, puts 500 J of energy into a circular spot 2.00 mm in diameter in 4.00 s? (b) Discuss how this intensity compares to the average intensity of sunlight (about $700{\text{W/m}}^2$ ) and the implications that would have if the laser beam entered your eye. Note how the amount of damage depends on the time duration of the exposure.