A mass suspended on a spring will exhibit sinusoidal motion when it moves. If the mass on a spring is 85 cm off the ground at its highest position and 41 cm off the ground at its lowest position and takes 3.0 s to go from the top to the bottom and back again, determine an equation to model the data.

Question

amistre64 · Answer

85 - 41 gives us the actual number for our altitudes...

44  divide that by 2 to get the amplitude.... 22

22 trig f(x) + 41 so far

amistre64 · Answer

sinusoidal means they want it to mimic the sin function.... and they dont give any more detail there so we will use it as our model.

22 sin(x)+41    so far :)

amistre64 · Answer

3 seconds I assume is the full period from peak to peak...

amistre64 · Answer

2pi/3  is then our period modification.

22 sin(2pi x/3 ) + 41 sounds about right...