Almost all introductory physics classes will, at some point, include springs and elastic forces. When studying such topics, it is interesting to consider the spring system shown in Fig. 1. In this system, two identical springs are arranged with the top of one spring anchored to the ceiling and the bottom of the second spring attached to a hanging weight. The two springs are then connected by a "middle" string, c. There are two other strings that are not tensioned (strings d and b), one connecting the ceiling and the bottom spring, and the other connecting to the hanging weight and the top spring. As indicated in Fig. 1, these two "support" strings have some slack in them.