Talk:Hooke's law

message: The core of the accompanying article Hooke's law is the wide proportionality of stress and strain, and its limits and implications. The time of its discovery, and the discoverer (since it bears his name) should also be included; likewise the lag between discovery and publication, since it may be crucial to an occasional user. These are things that are not as reasonable to cover elsewhere.  But the minutiae of the means of establishment of the priority misplaced in the article: they are much more relevant to Hooke's bio (they say far more about his practice of science than about the core topic), and they can be linked to Robert Hooke without cluttering the article as the current language does.--Jerzy•t 06:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  On the other hand, now the historic material is insufficient.  This classic topic deserves  "History" section, not limited to Hooke.  For example, who extended the law beyond simple springs and axial stresses? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Excessive historical detail 

message: Would it be appropriate to mention here that Hooke's Law is only a linear approximation (albeit one that is very good up to the elastic limit)?  CyborgTosser 01:04, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, plus I think the use of stress/strain should be toned down.  It's not the main idea behind Hooke's Law.  --Dan 15:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:14, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Only an approximation 

message: :I've added the box, inside the contrib, enclosing the quoted material without changing any markup within it.Jerzy•t 21:10, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation 

message: The picture shows a compression spring so the text under the picture should surely say Hooke's law accurately models the physical properties of common mechanical springs at small extensions or compressions. As a newbie I don't know how to edit the text myself.  (cuddlyable3) 84.210.139.189 11:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed it to Hooke's law accurately models the physical properties of common mechanical springs for small changes in length.  - EndingPop 13:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Caption) 

message: "For many applications, a prismatic rod, with length L and cross sectional area A, can be treated as a linear spring." Under the heading "Details" the above sentence with its reference to an unfamiliar "prismatic rod" confused me. The term "prismatic rod" just links to "bar" which has a lot of meanings. Apart from that obscure word "prismatic" I think the unclarity is because the writer has a diagram in his head that we can't see. That diagram would show that the discussion has changed from a coiled spring like in the picture to an elemental block of material, and that this is being extended (or compressed) in the direction of its length L, which is not obvious.  (cuddlyable3) 84.210.139.189 15:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In structural analysis a prismatic rod usually refers to a rectangular prism.  Regardless, this statement about the linearity of the stress-strain curve is true for any bar of constant cross-section.  I've made this change in the article.  -EndingPop 18:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  As you see my objection is to using the word "prismatic" which can send an ordinary reader (equipped with an ordinary dictionary and not privy to the jargon of structural analysis) into a spin. In the real world the statement is NOT "true for any bar of constant cross-section". Uniform cross-section is not even a requirement for Hooke's law, only for the elemental analysis to follow. I also dislike the introduction words "For many applications..." which smack of pedantic vagueness. As a friendlier alternative I suggest: We may view a small rod of any elastic material as a linear spring. The rod has length L and cross-sectional area A. (cuddlyable3) 84.210.139.189 10:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why talk about a prismatic rod? 

message: The discussion of zero-length springs seems confused, and badly obscures the simple definition of a zero-length spring, namely a spring for which L0 is zero in the expression force = (spring constant) * ( length - L0 ). The article also misleadingly asserts that zero-length springs do not obey Hooke's law: in a typical zero-length spring's operating range, the force is indeed a linear function of the length, and that is Hooke's Law. One might wonder whether Hooke's Law requires that the linear relationship extend all the way to zero force, but even if one asserts that there is such a requirement (which is not stated in the current article, by the way), it does not rule out Hooke's-Law behavior of zero-length springs, since a zero-length spring can be constructed to encompass the zero-force region within its linear regime. Thus, non-Hooke's-Law behavior is not an essential attribute of zero-length springs. I would propose that the discussion of zero-length springs adds nothing to the discussion of Hooke's Law, and should appear as a standalone Wikipedia entry. Since the only discussion of zero-length springs that I've ever seen relates to gravimetry, the web page at http://jclahr.com/science/psn/zero/winding/gravity_sensor.html would make an excellent starting point.Peter 22:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Treatment of zero-length springs 

message: This page should link to Harmonic oscillator at some point and discuss the relationship. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 132.206.14.212 (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As long as the oscillation stays within the range where the spring obeys Hooke's law, the oscillation is so-called Simple Harmonic Motion. That means it follows a sinusoidal function of time in the ideal case (always modified in practice by friction and/or transient disturbance, i.e. we can't make it a perpetual motion device). Be wary of HagermanBot's proposal because of the following nemenclature tangle: "harmonics" in music and electronics are overtones (multiples) of the fundamental frequency. From that viewpoint, the Simple harmonic motion of the ideal Hookean spring oscillator means Without harmonics. I hope there is a less confusing way to explain the above.Cuddlyable3 16:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship to Harmonic oscillator 

message: Referring to this recent edit, can this (no edit summary) be verified or should it be reverted because no verification was given? --Berland 11:10, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I had a look at it myself, and the change made the formula consistent with the preceding, so the edit is hereby verified. --Berland 11:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  IP edit, can somebody verify 

message: Thank you for this Article you guys really saved my ass.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.232.151.240 (talk) 04:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Thank you) 

message: Am I the only one who thinks, that the last part of the article is, from a physical point of wiev, a bit wierd? The point of writing up Hookes Law in tensor notation is not just so the eggheads can use their fancy math, but it is needed to make a precise description of the elastic properties in 3D (what the derivation shows). Since the page already use expressions from Landau & Lifshitz, why not go overboard and use a thermodynamic derivation like theirs? That would 1. Show the importance of the 3D expression 2. Give some useful connections to thermodynamics via. the identity: \left(\frac{dU}{d\varepsilon_{ij}}\right)_S=\sigma_{ij} I would gladly write it, if someone else would correct my wiki-errors. I suspect I'd make quite a few... Bierlich (talk) 19:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tensor notation part perhaps a bit unprecise? 

message: As [K] is the stiffness matrix it would be less confusing to call [C] the elasticity tensor or material matrix (tensor) instead of stiffness tensor.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.187.218.187 (talk) 11:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, the stiffness matrix and compliance matrix have, by a quirk of history, been written as [C] and [S] by the mechanics community (which is the set of people most likely to come by looking for these terms on Wikipedia).  The term elasticity tensor does not distinguish between a stiffness tensor and its inverse (both are elasticity tensors) and is not in regular use by the community. Also, there are several elasticity tensors and a separate page for those would be ideal. Bbanerje (talk) 21:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  C = Stiffness tensor 

message: I concur with the analysis this article has a history of some anon disturbances. While I'm not sure if it's straight up vandalism, edit warring or someone trying to sock to get around a ban it seems little storms keep erupting. I have semi-protected for 30 days, protection can then be lifted and if it starts up again it should be extended.  --WGFinley (talk) 13:42, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-Protection 

message: I strongly agree with the above tag. Please don't forget that Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia, not a collection of textbooks and course notes. Hooke's law is hugely relevant to all sorts of readers, but this article seems to be written for the benefit of graduate students in physics and mechanics.  The article should be made interesting to people who have only a high school math education.  It is OK to give the main formulas of continuum elasticity in in tensor form, but most of the details should be pushed to separate articles, such as stress tensor, strain tensor Young modulus, etc..  Such splitting would also benefit the specialist readers who seek the advanced material, as they will not have to scroll through pages of irrelevant stuff.  (Note that those readers will hardly ask for "Hooke's law" if what they need the stress tensor in spherical coordinates.) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:14, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Specifically, I propose to move most of the continuum mechanics material (sections "Tensor expression" and "Thermodynamic basis") to linear elasticity and other specialized articles, leaving here only a short section that presents the general idea as being the ultimate generalization of Hooke's law. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 15:35, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  I strongly disagree with your planned course of action.  Your definition of encyclopedia is quite limited and I have a feeling that you may not have read any of the so-called "encyclopedia"s of science.  The average reader (one who just wants to find out what the term means) needs only the first few lines of the articles.  Anyone who wishes to use the concept will need to go further.  Are you suggesting they read through ten different books to collect the information that is given in succint form in this article?  I use this article regularly and I'm sure there are others who do.    Please look at some of the earlier comments on this talk page before you throw away content that others have requested. Do you use linear elasticity every day?  Bbanerje (talk) 04:46, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not proposing to throw away anything, just to reorganize what is there (and add more, as I have been doing these few days).  No, I do not use linear elasticity every day, but I had to learn it for a couple of projects in computer graphics and image processing.  But that is precisely the point. Wikipedia should not be written *only* or even *primarily* for the specialists, but rather for people like me, who are the vast majority of its readers.  The so-called "encyclopedias of XXX" that you mention are abusing the term, and are definitely not a model that Wikipedia should follow (even though their contents can and will be here somewhere).  All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 18:09, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Bbanerje - You need to stop thinking of those who understand more than you as "specialists", and that you represent the majority of readers. The page should be designed for almost everyone. Someone who understands little of the subject should get an idea of things from the introduction. Those with a better background can go further, and so on, and so on. Writing down a 3 dimensional second rank tensor as an explicit 3x3 matrix is helpful in the beginning, but this should not be a page that teaches tensor algebra, and to go further, the reader needs to learn tensor algebra, on another page. This page should not be a reflection of your present understanding of the subject, it should offer some understanding to anyone, with links on how to get up to speed to go further at the point where they get stuck. If you get stuck at a certain point, resist the urge to collect everything you don't understand and put it in a page for "specialists". PAR (talk) 07:09, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Too technical

message: "Spring physics" currently redirects to the "The spring equation" section of this article, which doesn't exist anymore. How should it be fixed? Is it fine for me to simply remove the anchor from the redirect, since Hooke's law is basically "the spring equation"? --SoledadKabocha (talk) 22:46, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that would be good. I edited the redirect to drop "#The spring equation". Glrx (talk) 00:31, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Spring physics" redirect 

message: I learned that \sigma=E * \epsilon, and that  \sigma=F/A (force in Newton divided by the area of the cross section of the specimen in mm2). And that \epsilon= \deltaL / L (the relative extension, without unit). E (Young'sw module) is depending of the material. In all F/A = E *  \deltaL / L. Unit for e is also N/mm2 (or N/m2 or Pascal). But the article suggests that F =  E *  \deltaL / L , if I understand it correctly. 
Boeing720 (talk) 23:19, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange 

message: Hi -  User:Lakeratatat is my student and I accidentally directed him to delete external links and a template on Hooke's law.  We are trying to prepare an article Wikiversity:Second Journal of Science and meant to do this to attributed copy of this article at User:Lakeratatat/sandbox.See also v:Wikiversity Journal--Guy vandegrift (talk) 18:27, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accidental edit was good faith error -- not vandalism 

message: At some stages throughout the article \varepsilon is used and sometimes \epsilon. Is there a reason for the use of these? AndrewDaleCramer (talk) 22:37, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any reason to use both forms. I'd use just \epsilon. Glrx (talk) 18:07, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unify epsilons 

message: Substituted at 18:14, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: The line slops the wrong way since the force is in the opposite direction to the extension (x). As drawn the object would move away from the equilibrium position with increasing acceleration.
In the text it does state that the 'magnitude is F'. The graphic does not plot the magnitude of F since it shows negative magnitude with negative x.
Although this is quite a standard explanation and graph I think it is clearer and simpler to simply plot F = -kx correctly and explain that the force is in the opposite direction to the extension.
Plunk502 (talk) 08:50, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formal Definition - For linear springs: Slope of line in graphic 

message: There is currently a one-line reference to the so-called Universal Elastic Anisotropy Index which does nothing but citing a paywalled article. If it has a seperate subsection of the article, there should at least be a definition of it. This same cryptic reference can be found on the Zener ratio page. I propose it is removed from this page and explained in more detail on the Zener ratio page. JanJaeken (talk) 13:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Universal Elastic Anisotropy Index 

message: I know how it works.  I love the graphic and all the gears and links.  Does this provide a meaningful illustration of Hooke's Law?   JHowardGibson (talk) 03:36, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bourdon Tube Pressure Gauge 

message: I just came to this page, and was confused by this phrasing:
He first stated the law in 1676 as a Latin anagram. He published the solution of his anagram in 1678 as: ut tensio, sic vis ("as the extension, so the force" or "the extension is proportional to the force").
Why not mention the anagram, ceiiinosssttuv? I'd also like to cite and link the source.
I propose:
He first stated the law in 1676 as the Latin anagram ceiiinosssttuv. He published the solution of his anagram in 1678 as: ut tensio, sic vis ("as the extension, so the force" or "the extension is proportional to the force"). PlusPeter (talk) 20:59, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for phrasing and sourcing in the first paragraph