The FULL story behind the slinky drop

This paper presents a "fully involved" (as they would say at Firehouse Subs) mathematical model of the behavior of a slinky under the influence of gravity. YES: There's a lot of math above the level of this course. BUT: What can you take away from the analysis offered by this author?

Slinky drop simulator

This demo simulates dropping a slinky (and you control the length of the slinky)!

Here's a picture of what you'll see:

"Reset" and "Pause/play" do pretty much what you'd expect them to do.

At what point does each atom in the slinky begin to "fall?"

How does the "hang time" for the bottom atom change as you make the slinky longer?

You can also have some fun by clicking and dragging the atoms to stretch and compress the slinky both vertically and horizontally! Also try the "Random atoms" setting! How does the behavior you observe demonstrate the concepts of forces we've discussed in class?

Slinky drop in slow motion!

Since the demo in class was likely to quick to view, here's a slow motion video:



Here's a similar video with a more dramatic angle (and some narration):



And here's a third video with a SUPER-LONG slinky, just to see how the length impacts the result!



How does this behavior demonstrate the concepts of forces we discussed in class?

Student slinky drop videos!

Here are some slinky drop videos recorded by physics students!





Were each of these slinkies at rest upon release? If not, how did that impact the behavior of the bottom rim?

If you record your own video, post a link to it in the comments!