Nasal Strips People in all walks of life use nasal strips, or external nasal dilator strips (ENDS), to alleviate a number of respiratory problems. First introduced to eliminate snoring, they are now finding use in a number of other areas. For example, dentists have found that nasal strips help patients breathe better during dental procedures, making the experience considerably more pleasant for both doctor and patient. Surprisingly, horse owners have also discovered the advantage of nasal strips, and have begun to apply large "horse-sized" strips to saddle horses-as well as racing thoroughbreds-to reduce fatigue and lung stress. One of the great advantages of ENDS is that no drugs are involved; the strips are a purely mechanical device, consisting of two flat, polyester springs enclosed by an adhesive tape covering. When applied to the nose, they exert an outward force that enlarges the nasal passages and reduces the resistance to air flow (see the illustration (Figure 1)). The mechanism shown in the figure is used to measure the behavior of these strips.(Figure 2) For example, if a 30-g
g
weight is placed on the moveable platform (of negligible mass), the strip is found to compress from an initial length of 50 mm
m
m
to a reduced length of 19 mm
m
m
, as can be seen in the figure. (Figure 3)
On the straight-line segment I in the figure we see that increasing the applied mass from 26 g
g
to 44 g
g
results in a reduction of the end-to-end distance from 21 mm
m
m
to 14 mm
m
m
. What is the force constant in N/m
N
/
m
on segment I?