00:01
Okay, so in this problem, we have these three masses on these three identical springs, and we're told a couple of things at the start when the elevator is motionless.
00:12
So m1 hanging from this spring is going to stretch the spring 14 centimeters or 0 .14 meters.
00:21
And so we can use that to figure out the spring constant of these springs.
00:26
The spring constant will be equal to, well, the force is equal to the weight.
00:30
Of the mass, and so the spring constant is the weight of the mass, m1g, divided by the stretching distance x1.
00:43
And if we plug in our values for that, we get a spring constant of 301 newtons per meter.
00:50
Now, when we analyze the situation when we have the three masses and the three springs, we're going to have two weights pulling down on that second spring, the middle spring.
01:01
Going to be mass two and mass three.
01:04
Now the spring, the third spring will end up just transferring the weight, the load from mass three up into the second spring due to the fact that it will be being stretched but also be pulling on mass two...