MATH-1080-351

Evelyn Benavidez

December 2018

Professor John Schweitzer

Reflection

Mass spring systems are very prevalent and important in everyday life, such as shocks

in a vehicle or bungee cords to the springs in a mattress or a trampoline. Using as an example the

shock in a vehicle, there are many characteristics of a massive spring system that must be

understood such as the amplitude which is how far the spring can be compressed or stretched

beyond the equilibrium (and therefore how much force it can absorb), the period which is the

time it takes to make a full cycle of compression and stretching and the frequency is how fast this

can occur (such as how many cycles, or full periods, occur in a certain time frame). Although I

have observed similar scenarios in my physics class, this project was able to help me better

understand the mathematical part of the physics I was doing rather than just being able to plug

things into equations and make it work. In the same way, this project prompted me to further

study real world applications for mass spring systems, which allowed me to better understand the

prevalence in our world of trigonometry.