A Simple Spring Model

Tony Baker

September 20 1998

What is potential energy?. Consider yourself jumping on a trampoline. At the top of you jump, you are stop and all your energy is termed "potential energy". As you start down you gain velocity and you start converting some of the po tential energy to "kenetic energy". At the point you touch the trampoline you have both potential energy and kenetic energy and the sum of the two equal the potential energy you had at the top of your jump when you were stop. As you begin to depress the trampoline and it starts slowing you down, you start storing you kenetic energy in the trampoline in the form of potential energy. The more you depress the trampoline, the more you store potential energy in the trampoline. Finally, when the trampoline has stopped you it is in it most deformed position, it has converted all of your kenetic energy to its own stored potential energy. Then