When a massless spring is pulled by 5N on both sides the tension in the spring is 5N (proved by considering COM at rest and breaking the spring into two springs of 2k each)...what if the forces applied were 5N at one end and 7N at the other end?What would be the resultant tension in the spring?
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1Do you have any ideas? – JMac Aug 20 '19 at 17:44
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Average of 5 and 7 maybe? – Schwarz Kugelblitz Aug 20 '19 at 17:45
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I am not able to find an answer in the duplicate as well!! – Schwarz Kugelblitz Aug 20 '19 at 18:13
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Drawing a free body diagram for the whole spring might help. – JMac Aug 20 '19 at 18:16
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Well I did but since the spring is massless that would mean it has infinte acceleration? – Schwarz Kugelblitz Aug 20 '19 at 18:21
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So what is your conclusion about having a mass spring in this situation? – nasu Aug 20 '19 at 18:31
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@SchwarzKugelblitz Right, but since we can pretend the spring is massless, we can pretend that infinite acceleration isn't really a problem either. It's also not relevant to the tension, which is what the question concerns. – JMac Aug 20 '19 at 18:37
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A mass spring would probably accelerate because of the excess 2 N and the remaining 5 would show up as tension? – Schwarz Kugelblitz Aug 20 '19 at 18:39
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@SchwarzKugelblitz And that's basically all there is to it. – JMac Aug 20 '19 at 18:49
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Ok what if there is massless spring? – Schwarz Kugelblitz Aug 20 '19 at 18:50
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@SchwarzKugelblitz That has no effect on the tension. You just wouldn't be able to determine the acceleration because it's non-physical. – JMac Aug 20 '19 at 18:57
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1It's not possible to pull on the two ends of a massless spring with different tensions. – Chet Miller Aug 20 '19 at 19:52