For Hooke's Law, the one about springs and mass, is the mass M a unit of g or kgs?
Mass does not appear directly in Hooke's law. It is a relationship between force (or weight) and deflection, distortion or strain. The force usually has units of kg*m/s^2, so k has units of kg/s^2
I'm writing a prac report on an experiment where we had to vary the mass on a spring, and graph it against the period, then graph it again when period vs square root of mass, which should be linear given the proportionality. Does it really matter which unit i use? g or kg
No, it doesnt matter.
To prove the relationship
Period = 2 pi sqrt(m/k), the spring constant k can have units of g/s^2 (or dyne/cm)if the m has units of g.
Thanks
Hooke's Law relates the force exerted by a spring to its displacement. The equation is usually written as F = -kx, where F is the force, k is the spring constant, and x is the displacement.
In this equation, the mass is not explicitly included. Hooke's Law specifically describes the behavior of the spring, not the object attached to it. Therefore, the mass itself does not appear in the equation.
However, if you are dealing with an object attached to a spring, the mass will affect the displacement of the spring. The displacement x can be calculated using the equation x = F/k, where F is the gravitational force acting on the object and k is the spring constant.
When calculating the gravitational force, the mass should be provided in kilograms (kg) rather than grams (g). The unit of force in Newtons (N) is derived from the unit of mass (kg) and acceleration due to gravity (m/s^2). So remember to use kilograms when calculating the displacement caused by the gravitational force acting on the mass attached to the spring.