Hooke's law

noun

, Physics.

1. the law stating that the stress on a solid substance is directly proportional to the strain produced, provided the stress is less than the elastic limit of the substance.

Hooke's law

/ hʊks /

noun

1. the principle that the stress imposed on a solid is directly proportional to the strain produced, within the elastic limit

Hooke's law

/ hks /

1. A law stating that the stress applied to a material is proportional to the strain on that material. For example, if a stress on a metal bar of ten newtons per square centimeter causes it to be compressed by four millimeters, then a stress of 20 newtons per square centimeter will cause the bar to be compressed by eight millimeters. Hooke's law generally holds only up to the elastic limit of stress for that material.
2. See also modulus of elasticity

Word History and Origins

Origin of Hooke's law¹

1850–55; named after R. Hooke who formulated it

Word History and Origins

Origin of Hooke's law¹

C18: named after Robert Hooke

Example Sentences

A three-judge Federal Circuit panel voted 2-1 to invalidate American Axle's patent after finding that it covered a simple application of Hooke's law, a physics principle.

From Reuters

Buffon could, if he wished, look back to the seventeenth century and identify a whole series of laws that had been discovered during the Scientific Revolution: Stevin’s law of hydrostatics, Galileo’s law of fall, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, Snell’s law of refraction, Boyle’s law of gases, Hooke’s law of elasticity, Huygens’ law of the pendulum, Torricelli’s law of flow, Pascal’s law of fluid dynamics, Newton’s laws of motion and law of gravity.

From Literature

Modern researchers hung a 50-metre-long wire inside the tower to test how it deformed under torsion — an exception to Hooke’s law describing the elastic behaviour of idealized springs.

From Nature

Looking at both ‘inlaws’ and ‘outlaws’ — the deep structural laws of the cosmos and minor elaborations such as Robert Hooke’s law of elasticity — Atkins explores the conservation of energy; laws related to temperature, electricity and magnetism; and fundamental constants such as the speed of light.

From Nature

The harmonic potential used to describe the electron-nucleus interaction is a consequence of Hooke’s law.

From Scientific American