Valve Action

We all know I love my trumpet. Here's a picture for those of you who don't know what it looks like. You should be ashamed of yourselves.


Well, one of the things that change the pitch on the trumpet are the valves (there are actually lots and lots of things but to write about all of them would take several books). These valves aren't just simple buttons. They are sophisticated mechanisms with various parts.

The most important thing in the valve is the spring, which makes the valve pop back up when depressed. According to Hooke's law, the negative distance that I push down on the valve multiplied by the spring constant is the spring force. Let's say the distance of depression is 0.02 meters and let the spring constant be k. So therefore

Fs=-k(-0.02 m)

According to Newton's second law, F=ma. So let's say m=0.05 kg and a=0.11 m/s^2. So...

(0.05 kg)(0.11 m/s^2)/(0.02 m)=k
k=0.28

Yay! I now have some more physics to impress my fellow peoples at YS. Go trumpets!
Note: My playing sadly did not improve from this.