Question

A spring oriented vertically is attached to a hard horizontal surface as in the figure below. The spring has a force constant of 1.64 kN/m. How much is the spring compressed when a object of mass m = 2.35 kg is placed on top of the spring and the system is at rest?

Answer 1

mg=kx
x=mg/k=2.35•9.8/1.64•10³=0.014 m

Answer 2

F=-kx
F=mg
mg=-kx
x=mg/-k
=2.30kg×9.80bm/s^2/1460N/m
=0.0154m