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Weighing astronauts. In order to study the long-term effects of weightlessness, astronauts in space must be weighed (or at least “massed”). One way in which this is done is to seat them in a chair of known mass attached to a spring of known force constant and measure the period of the oscillations of this system. If the 35.4 kg chair alone oscillates with a period of 1.25 s, and the period with the astronaut sitting in the chair is 2.23 s, find (a) the force constant of the spring and (b) the mass of the astronaut.
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