The
idea is that we hang a slinky vertically and measure its length.
We vary the number of coils that we allow to hang. A slinky is a
spring, right? In this situation, the key difference between our
slinky and a typical physics-book spring is that the slinky is not
massless.
length is the length in centimeters. coils
is the number of coils.
Even without looking at the photo, what do you expect the hanging
slinky to look like? Will it be the same from top to bottom? More
bunched up at the top? More bunched up at the bottom? Why?
How does the length of this slinky depend on the number of coils?
This turns out to be a subtle question! A good start is to look
at the data with Fathom and see, approximately, how they relate.
This may be good enough.
These data were painstakingly taken by Bryan Cooley.
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