Planetoids with a Spring

Advanced HS
Intro HS
Physical Science
Javascript

Think back to the momentum exercise. The little ship can collide with a “blob” and stick to it. Now imagine that this blob is attached to a spring. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the ship could collide with the blob and then the spring would push and pull both around? This is what we will do in this exercise.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this lesson students will…

  • Apply Hooke’s Law, Newton’s 2nd Law, and constant acceleration kinematic equations to code a blob on a spring to behave appropriately when it is collided by a spaceship.
  • Evaluate the theoretical half-cycle time of the coded spring.
  • Create a code which accounts for the dampening effect of the spring with time.

Planetoids with a Spring Playlist