To have a complete description of what happens during an oscillation, we need to know the position, velocity, and acceleration of the oscillating object at all times during its motion. We can actually find these for the case in which the restoring force is directly proportional to the distance that the object is displaced from equilibrium. This relation- ship is called Hooke’s law for the force exerted by an ideal spring (Section 6-5). Hooke’s law is important because experiment shows that if you stretch a spring by a relatively small amount, the force that the spring exerts on you is directly proportional to the amount of stretch: