Suppose you have a regular spring-mass setup, with the spring's fixed end at the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system and the free end is connected to a point-mass free to move along the -axis.
Let the total stretched length of the spring at any time be .
The point-mass moves at a velocity at an instant in time.
The spring is of mass lowercase and of uniform density.
If there is a mass element of length that is units away from the fixed end of the spring, .
The velocity of the same small mass element will be
Find the total kinetic energy of the system when the velocity of the point-mass is .
The answer comes in the form
Where are coprime positive integers.
Type your answer as .
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Since the spring has mass and a uniform density, integrating each differential kinetic energy d T is the best approach.
d T = 2 1 u 2 d m
T s = ∫ m 2 1 u 2 d m
Where d m = L m d x , and u = L x v
T s = 2 1 L m ∫ 0 L ( L v x ) 2 d x
T s = 2 1 L 3 m v 2 3 L 3
This leaves the kinetic energy of the spring as 6 m v 2 . The rest is pretty straightforward, adding the kinetic energy of the mass to the expression.
The resultant expression is T ( v ) = 2 1 ( M + 3 1 m ) v 2