Halliday, Resnick & Walker — Kinetic Energy and Work: Problem 28

28 During spring semester at MIT, residents of the parallel buildings of the East Campus dorms battle one another with large catapults that are made with surgical hose mounted on a window frame. A balloon filled with dyed water is placed in a pouch attached to the hose, which is then stretched through the width of the room. Assume that the stretching of the hose obeys Hooke’s law with a spring constant of 110 N/m. If the hose is stretched by 5.00 m and then released, how much work does the force from the hose do on the balloon in the pouch by the time the hose reaches its relaxed length?