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  • Explain Newton’s third law of motion with respect to stress and deformation.
  • Describe the restoration of force and displacement.
  • Calculate the energy in Hook’s Law of deformation, and the stored energy in a string.
In this figure a hand holding a ruler tightly at the bottom is shown. The other hand pulls the top of the ruler and then releases it. Then the ruler starts vibrating, and oscillates around the equilibrium position. A vertical line is shown to mark the equilibrium position. A curved double-headed arrow shows the span of the oscillation.
When displaced from its vertical equilibrium position, this plastic ruler oscillates back and forth because of the restoring force opposing displacement. When the ruler is on the left, there is a force to the right, and vice versa.

Newton’s first law implies that an object oscillating back and forth is experiencing forces. Without force, the object would move in a straight line at a constant speed rather than oscillate. Consider, for example, plucking a plastic ruler to the left as shown in [link] . The deformation of the ruler creates a force in the opposite direction, known as a restoring force    . Once released, the restoring force causes the ruler to move back toward its stable equilibrium position, where the net force on it is zero. However, by the time the ruler gets there, it gains momentum and continues to move to the right, producing the opposite deformation. It is then forced to the left, back through equilibrium, and the process is repeated until dissipative forces dampen the motion. These forces remove mechanical energy from the system, gradually reducing the motion until the ruler comes to rest.

The simplest oscillations occur when the restoring force is directly proportional to displacement. When stress and strain were covered in Newton’s Third Law of Motion , the name was given to this relationship between force and displacement was Hooke’s law:

F = kx. size 12{F= - ital "kx"} {}

Here, F size 12{F} {} is the restoring force, x size 12{x} {} is the displacement from equilibrium or deformation    , and k size 12{k} {} is a constant related to the difficulty in deforming the system. The minus sign indicates the restoring force is in the direction opposite to the displacement.

A series of illustrations of vibrating plastic rulers is shown demonstrating Hooke’s law.
(a) The plastic ruler has been released, and the restoring force is returning the ruler to its equilibrium position. (b) The net force is zero at the equilibrium position, but the ruler has momentum and continues to move to the right. (c) The restoring force is in the opposite direction. It stops the ruler and moves it back toward equilibrium again. (d) Now the ruler has momentum to the left. (e) In the absence of damping (caused by frictional forces), the ruler reaches its original position. From there, the motion will repeat itself.

The force constant     k size 12{k} {} is related to the rigidity (or stiffness) of a system—the larger the force constant, the greater the restoring force, and the stiffer the system. The units of k size 12{k} {} are newtons per meter (N/m). For example, k size 12{k} {} is directly related to Young’s modulus when we stretch a string. [link] shows a graph of the absolute value of the restoring force versus the displacement for a system that can be described by Hooke’s law—a simple spring in this case. The slope of the graph equals the force constant k size 12{k} {} in newtons per meter. A common physics laboratory exercise is to measure restoring forces created by springs, determine if they follow Hooke’s law, and calculate their force constants if they do.

Practice Key Terms 4

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Source:  OpenStax, College physics. OpenStax CNX. Jul 27, 2015 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11406/1.9
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