Hooke's Law (Professorbikeybike)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Hooke's law is the general law of mechanics which states that stress is directly proportional to strain.

In 1676, Robert Hooke stated that The power (sic.) of any springy body is in the same proportion with the extension and is thus credited with developing the law of the same name.

Mathematically, this is to say that

F = k · u

Where F is the applied force (not power as Hooke suggested), u is the deformation of the body (usually a spring in textbook examples), and k is the spring constant.

There are many basic examples, and very complicated three-dimensional extensions of this law that might make their way here at some point.