Serway & Jewett — Energy of a System: Problem 13.

The tray dispenser in your cafeteria has broken and is not repairable. The custodian knows that you are good at designing things and asks you to help him build a new dispenser out of spare parts he has on his workbench. The tray dispenser supports a stack of trays on a shelf that is supported by four springs, one at each corner of the shelf. Each tray is rectangular, with dimensions 45.3 cm by 35.6 cm. Each tray is 0.450 cm thick and has a mass of 580 g. The custodian asks you to design a new four-spring dispenser such that when a tray is removed, the dispenser pushes up the remaining stack so that the top tray is at the same position as the just-removed tray was. He has a wide variety of springs that he can use to build the dispenser. Which springs should he use?