Question

What is an experiment you could conduct that might measure elastic potential energy and gravitational potential energy?

I also need to answer these questions:
What materials would you use?
What would you measure?
What results would you expect?
What if the results were different; what would that indicate?

Answer 1

brokenstanzas

What is an experiment you could conduct that might measure elastic potential energy and gravitational potential energy? I also need to answer these questions: What materials would you use? What would you measure? What results would you expect? What if the results were different; what would that indicate

Elastic potential energy needs something which is elastic - it stretches - and you can SEE/measure by how much it stretches. This is what a "spring balance" does, or whatever it's called. The balance has a spring in it which is CALIBRATED to extend by a certain amount for, say, a 1N force hanging from it. A "STIFF" spring will extend less than a ... non stiff one ...

Grav pe, or GPE is calculated from the fairly standard and easy expression GPE = mgh. M is the mass of the thing being shoved around in the grav field. g is acceleration of gravity which can be APPROXIMATED to 10. h is the vertical height through which the thing is/was shoved.

Setting up the balance, with whatever is needed to put a, SAY, 1kg mass on it, such that the mass is at a KNOWN reference mark against a metre rule, I'd very gently allow the mass to "fall" and so extend the spring balance - much as though I was weighing the mass.

Where it settles compared to where it was beforehand will give the h in the GPE formula. g is 10, and m is known.

So, you know that in, say, 0.5m of "fall" the GPE of the mass has decreased (it's got closer to the centre of the earth, albeit not by very much) has decreased by 1kgx10m/s/sx0.5m Joules.

You also know that the spring has extended, so that mechanical/elastic work was done to stretch it.

Conservation of energy then "suggests" that the LOSS in GPE by mass = GAIN in ELASTIC PE by spring.
So, what's needed now is to know the spring constant of the spring - how much work is needed to stretch it by the amount it's been stretched. That suggests SPRING CONSTANT. And that suggests either looking up the spring constant for that spring somewhere, or doing a separate experiment to calculated it (hoping that it's a linear spring, among other things).
I forget what the formula for ELASTIC energy is, unless it's something like half k x squared where k is the spring constant, and x is the amount of the stretch.

Then, I guess, you compare the "mgh" numbers with the "elastic" numbers, and they should be "equal" within "apparatus collapsing" experimental error. (Bad joke).
I'd hope they were more or less equal. Were they to be different, I'd probably frown, to say the least, because it suggests that I don't know what I'm talking about.

Being brave now, in the face of "doubt", it may be possible to do a similar experiment, but this time by making the spring OSCILLATE up and down, and looking for some property of the oscillations. Reason I'm saying this bit is that getting a number of measurements for comparison may make it more convincing that even in birds' nests, GPE and EPE still have some relationship.
Bon voyage, et bon chance.
http://perendis.webs.com

Answer 2

can anyone help me please.