Why do springs bounce back after being pulled?

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It is interesting how spring-shaped object have this bouncy characteristic quality about them. Even if its hair or just an ordinary spring, they snap back to their original shape. Why is it that corkscrew shapes are so elastic?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s not the corkscrew shape that lets springs snap back.

All materials, when bent, have a range of “elastic deformation” – in this range of motion they will return to their original shape. When you overshoot this, you either permanently bend or break something.

A solid metal bar will experience this too.

A coil allows a small bend in the metal to add up down the length of the spring to make a larger bend. This means that no individual point of the spring bends a lot, but they add together to bend a lot. They never bend so much to break or get permanently deformed.

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