Hooke's law

Hooke's law states that, within an elastic limit, deformation is proportional to applied force or stress. For a spring, force is proportional to displacement from equilibrium and acts in the opposite direction.

Spring constant: A measure of a spring's stiffness, relating its force to displacement. It is the proportionality constant in the spring form of Hooke's law.
Force: An interaction that changes or tends to change an object's motion or shape. The applied force is the input whose relation to deformation the law describes.
Spring scale: A force-measuring instrument that infers load from the extension of a calibrated spring. Its reading depends on a known force–extension relation.
Plastic deformation: Permanent change in shape that remains after a material's load is removed. Unlike Hookean elastic deformation, plastic deformation is not fully reversible.
Stress–strain curve: A graph showing how a material's stress changes with strain. Its initial linear region displays Hookean behavior and its end marks departure from proportionality.
Displacement: A vector describing the change in position from an initial point to a final point. For a spring, deformation is measured as displacement from its equilibrium length.
Mechanical spring: An elastic device that stores mechanical energy when deformed and releases it when unloaded. A spring is the standard system for applying Hooke's law directly.
Viscoelasticity: Mechanical behavior combining elastic response with time-dependent viscous deformation. Its response depends on loading duration, unlike the ideal instantaneous Hookean relation.
Elastic limit: The greatest stress a material can withstand while still returning to its original shape after unloading. Hooke's law applies only within the material's elastic range.
Stress (mechanics): Internal force per unit area within a material. Stress expresses loading in a form that can be compared across differently sized samples.

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