1. You are standing on a high diving board, 3.0 m above a deep pool of water. Yo
ID: 1468454 • Letter: 1
Question
1. You are standing on a high diving board, 3.0 m above a deep pool of water. You are holding a large spring in your hands, which has a stiffness of 120 N/m. The spring is initially uncompressed. You jump off the board and, as you are falling, you compress the spring by 5 cm.
(a) Ignoring air resistance, how fast are you and the spring moving when you hit the water below?
(b) At that point, how much potential energy is stored in the spring?
(c) Initially, you had no kinetic energy, and the spring stored no potential energy; what were the sources of energy that must have decreased so that these terms could increase by a corresponding amount?
Explanation / Answer
This is a question of conservation of energy
a) PE at the diving board = KE(when hitting the water)
mgh = 0.5mv^2
v = sqrt(2gh) = sqrt(2*9.8*3)
v = 7.67m/s
b) potential energy stord in the spring = 0.5kx^2
= 0.5*120*(0.05)^2
= 0.15 J
c) the potential energy of the body when it was at a height of 3 m above is decreased and is converted to Kinetic energy and the spring energy
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