Question

A certain carnival game at the fair tests your strength by asking you to swing a hammer and hit a spring. The further the spring is compressed, the larger the prize you earn. A clever physics student wants to win the largest prize at the fair and observes that the spring must be compressed half a meter in order to win the largest price. Please show work and explain.

A) The student does experimenting and discovers that the spring compresses 2.4 cm when a 9kg backpack is set on it. Using this, determine how much energy it takes to compress the spring enough to win the largest prize.

B) Instead of swinging a hammer, the student finds a brick and holds it up high, and then drops it onto the spring. If the brick has a mass of 30kg, and the student lets it go from 1.2 meters above the top of the spring, will the spring compress enough to win the prize?

Answer 1