EMILIO AGUINALDO COLLEGE

Gov. D. Mangubat St. Brgy. Burol Main, City of Dasmariñas, Cavite 4114, Philippines

Name: Lorenz Blaise Galvez Date: Oct. 17, 2021

Professor: Palmero, Ron Joshua

Spring and Masses

I. Objective

The objective of this activity is to make an interpretation about the e motion

of a mass oscillating on a vertical spring and determine the equilibrium position of
a vertical oscillator.

II. Hypothesis

At the end of this activity, we will be able to apply Hooke’s law to a spring-
mass system and Determine the magnitude and epicenter of an earthquake from a
seismogram.

III. Background knowledge of the topic

Simple harmonic motion is often modeled with the example of a mass on a

spring, where the restoring force obey' s Hooke's Law and is directly proportional
to the displacement of an object from its equilibrium position. It is one of the most
fundamental concepts in physics and it’s used to describe many different
phenomena, from the vibration of a tuning fork to the vibrations of the electrons in
an atom.

IV. Steps Taken in the Simulation

In the first task, we will attach a mass to an ideal vertical spring and neglect
the resistance of air. In this task we will play with a vertical spring that moves
without friction and observe its motion when no air resistance acts on it.

The second task is to work on an ideal system and determine its equilibrium
for different combinations of springs and masses. In this task also we need to
determine the elasticity of different springs and measure it.

Before the last task an earthquake Occurred.

The last task is to get to assemble your own seismic station and learn how
to read a seismogram, the recording output of a seismograph and detect the
magnitude using Richter scale.
V. Obtained Results

In the first task, we will attach a mass to an ideal vertical spring and
neglect the resistance of air. In this task it shows that when the mass
combined with the spring it will begin to oscillate. It is because the
displacement of one side is equal to the other side, and their time interval
is also the same.

The second task is to work on an ideal system and determine its equilibrium
for different combinations of springs and masses. In this task also we need to
determine the elasticity of different springs and measure it. Using Hooke’s law, we
can determine the spring force and how long the equilibrium extension can be
made with the combination of mass and spring. The soft-ideal spring makes a
greater equilibrium than the stiff-ideal spring.

This diagram shows the motion of the mass-spring system by pointing to

the displacement in the given time and observing its oscillation.
 The last task is to a) get to assemble your own seismic station b) learn how
to read a seismogram, and the recording output of a seismograph c) detect the
magnitude with Richter scale.

a) Here we make our own seismic station using spring, paper roll where
the seismic data will be written and pen to write the seismic activity on the paper.

b) The distance between the first P-waves, S-waves, and the highest
amplitude of the S-waves are measured with the use of two rulers that are seen in
this illustration. The horizontal axis in the illustrations represents one second in
each millimeter. The distance between the seismic station to the epicenter of the
earthquake is linked with the time interval of arrival time between the P and S-
waves. The velocity of S- waves is 10km/s and the duration of travel was 20
seconds the distance will be 200 km.

c) In the last part, with the information given, we detect the magnitude using
Richter scale. The line connecting the values in the left and right scales intersect
the Richter scale at 4.5. Therefore, people 200km from the lab would experience 4.5
magnitude on Richer scale.
VI. Conclusion

In my conclusion, we can determine the distance between the seismograph

and the origin of the earthquake through the measurement of the time interval
between the arrivals of the P and S waves groups that are identified in the
seismograph. With that, the distance of the earthquake is determined from the
seismograph while the magnitude is derived into amplitudes of the waves on the
seismogram. These learning that we acquired are going to be useful for those
who wants to be a seismologist someday and for us future engineers.