Honorable Mention - Contrived Category

Title: Untitled
Student: Caitlan Smith
School: Peters Township High School, McMurray, PA
Teacher: Susan M. Hlebinsky

The physics in this photograph deals with the topic of springs and the related calculations. After being in hot steam curlers and treated with hairspray, a curl of hair resembles a spring. When a clip with a mass of 5.67 g is attached to the end of the “spring,” the “spring,” which had an original length of 0.125 m, had a displacement of 0.025 m, resulting in a length of 0.150 m. With this information, and the knowledge that 9.80 m/s2 is the acceleration due to gravity, I can calculate the spring constant of the curl with the equation F = kx.

This value of k, 2.220 N/m, the spring constant, represents the elasticity of the spring. The lower the value of k, the greater the elasticity of the spring. The spring constant of this “hair spring,” being fairly small at 2.220 N/m, demonstrates the high elasticity of the spring.