Conceptual Questions Chap. 13

1
Conceptual Questions Chap. 13

1. If a spring is cut in half, what happens to its
   spring constant?
2. If an object-spring system is hung vertically and
   set into oscillation, why does the motion
   eventually stop?
3. If a grandfather clock were running slow, how
   could we adjust the length of the pendulum to
   correct the time?
4. What happens to the wavelength of a wave on a
   string when the frequency is doubled? Assume the
   tension in the string remains the same.

The force exerted by a spring is proportional to
the separation of the coils. The coil separation
of a half-spring will be twice as large as that
of the full spring for a given stretched length
of the spring. Thus, each half-spring will have
twice the spring constant of the full spring.
Friction. This includes both air resistance and
damping within the spring.
Shorten the pendulum to decrease the period
between ticks.
If the tension remains the same, the speed of a
wave on the string does not change. This means,
from v lf, that if the frequency is doubled,
the wavelength must decrease by a factor of two.