Mechanical Equivalent of a Capacitor is a Spring

The mechanical analog of a capacitor is the compliance of a spring. The voltage across a capacitor corresponds to the force used to displace a spring. The charge stored in the capacitor corresponds to the displacement of the spring. Thus, Eq.(E.2) corresponds to Hooke's law for ideal springs:

where is called the spring constant or spring stiffness. Note that Hooke's law is usually written as . The quantity is called the spring compliance.

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About the Author: Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.