The law of elasticity

Abstract

Participants estimated the imagined elongation of a spring while they were imagining that a load was stretching the spring. This elongation turned out to be a multiplicative function of spring length and load weight-a cognitive law analogous to Hooke¿s law of elasticity. Participants also estimated the total imagined elongation of springs joined either in series or in parallel. This total elongation was longer for serial than for parallel springs, and increased proportionally to the number of serial springs and inversely proportionally to the number of parallel springs. The results suggest that participants integrated load weight with imagined elasticity rather than with spring length.