Students are introduced to Hooke's law as well as stress-strain relationships. First they learn the governing equations, then they work through several example problems, first individually, then as a class. Through the lesson's two-part associated activity, students 1) explore Hooke's law by experimentally determining an unknown spring constant, and then 2) apply what they've learned to create a strain graph depicting a tumor using Microsoft Excel®. After the activities, the lesson concludes with a stress-strain quiz to assess each student's comprehension of the concepts.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.