There are many types of spring. Important among these are helical and spiral springs as shown in figure.
(a)
(b)
Usually, we assume that the springs are massless. Therefore, work done is stored in the spring in the form of elastic potential energy of the spring. Thus, potential energy of a spring is the energy associated with the state of compression or expansion of an elastic spring.
The potential energy, i.e. `U(x)` can be assumed zero when
Options:
(a) `x = 0`
(b) gravitational force is constant
(c) infinite distance from the gravitational source
(d) All of the above