Spring constant of the latex tubing

[martin417]

I have done my due diligence by searching CD, and was surprised not to find an answer to this question:

Has anyone empirically determined the spring constant for the latex tubing supplied in the KOP? I could do it, but I don't have access to the kit at the moment, and was curious.

Obviously, the value would have to be given for a fixed unstretched length, say 1 foot, but it should scale linearly. And it will change depending on age, temperature, humidity, etc, but a ball park figure should be good enough.

If no one has the answer, I will have the students perform an experiment, and report the results here.

[Jared Russell]

Martin:

I am positive that I have seen this information posted on Chief Delphi before, but I couldn't come up with it in a search.

I will keep looking.

[JB987]

While we are on the topic, does anyone know of a good current supplier for surgical tubing?

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Mcmaster (http://www.mcmaster.com/#surgical-tubing/=5cbz9r)While we are on the topic, does anyone know of a good current supplier for surgical tubing?

[vivek16]

If anyone measures this, I would be interested as well.

thanks, vivek

[kramarczyk]

Be careful measuring things that have large elongations, like rubber, as they are rarely linear.

As far as surgical tubing goes, there are both excel and lotus calculators on http://www.primelineindustries.com/tools.html along with a variety of other pieces of information.

The information was part of this (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=729452&postcount=6) previous discussion.

Who still uses Lotus anyway?

[Jack Jones]

This one comes in handy: (http://rubber-tubing-worldwide.com/tools/forcecalculator.xls)

[11Mort11]

Yeah with the surgical tubing the spring constant varies as it stretches out its not just on constant like a regular spring

[Mike Betts]

You will find the spring "constant" for surgical tubing is extremely sensitive to room temperature. Event venues are notorious for being cold in the morning and much warmer as the day progresses (due to both "smart" thermostats and body heat of the crowd).

Be warned...

Mike

[kirtar]

I did a lab in physics dealing with Hooke's law, and in it one thing that we did was examine a rubber band. The graph I got looked kind of like a logistics curve. In any case there seems to be a certain range in which elastics behave linearly, and after that point, it levels off.