AP Physics Chapter 10 Vocabulary

hooke’s law

describes elongation & how the force is related to the distance

spring (restoring) force

F=-kx, where k is the spring constant and x is the displacement of the spring from its unstrained length. The minus sign indicates that the restoring force always points in a direction opposite to the displacement of the spring from its unstrained length (newton’s law of action & reaction).

elongation

angular frequency

because ‘w’ is directly proportional to the frequency f, w is often called the

period

the time required to complete one cycle for any object in simple harmonic motion

simple harmonic motion

amplitude ‘A’

the maximum displacement from equilibrium position

elastic PE

the energy that a spring has by virtue of being stretched or compressed (kx^2/2)

simple pendulum

a pendulum that consists of a particle mass ‘m’, attached to a frictionless pivot by a cable of length ‘L’ and neglible mass

physical pendulum

a pendulum of a rigid extended object

* length ‘L’ for a physical pendulum is the distance between the axis at ‘P’ and the center of gravity of the object