What energy does a spring have?

Answer 1

A spring has no intrinsic energy just by being a spring. But there are several ways

for it to gain energy, and a few ways for it to store energy for later use.

-- Carry the spring upstairs. It gains gravitational potential energy.

-- Throw it at the wall in an upstairs room. It keeps the gravitational potential energy,

and gains kinetic energy, until it hits the wall.

-- Drop it out of the window. The gravitational potential energy it has is converted

to kinetic energy, which lasts until it hits the ground.

-- Leave it on the ground for a while. As the sun shines on it, it gains heat energy.

-- Take it back inside. While it's cooling off, it loses some of the heat energy that's

stored in it, by radiating it into the room.

-- Nail one end of the spring to the table.

-- Take the free end of the spring in your hand and stretch the spring. You have to use

force to do that, and you move the force through a distance. That means that you do

work on the spring, and the work is stored in the spring as mechanical energy.

-- Let go of the end of the stretched spring. It goes 'twannnng', returns to its original length,

and flops back and forth on the table a few times. Part of the mechanical energy that you

stored in it was coonverted into the sound energy responsible for the "twannnng", and

the rest is what caused the spring to flop around.

-- Take the free end of the spring in your hand again, and this time, compress it ...

push the spring together and make it shorter. Again, you have to use force and push it

through a distance, the work you do is stored in the spring again as mechanical energy,

and when you let go of it, the mechanical energy comes out of the spring again, causing

all of the same effects that you saw when it was stretched and released. And plus,

this time, if there happens to be a paper wad or a bean on the table in front of the

spring, then the spring may hit that object as the spring returns to its original length,

and send it shooting across the room and out the window. All of that motion came

from part of the mechanical energy that used to be stored in the spring, too.

All around, wherever you look, you'll find mechanical energy stored in the spring.

But it'll be much more difficult to find flowers that bloom in the spring.

Answer 2

A spring has potential energy when it is compressed or stretched. This potential energy can be converted into kinetic energy when the spring is released, causing it to bounce back to its original shape.