Your interviewer will likely ask you situation- and knowledge-based questions to understand how well you are able to explain concepts to others. Be prepared for questions like this one by practicing a few possibilities ahead of time. In this case, springs can be generally described by Hooke's law (F kx), which states that the amount of distance extended or compressed in a spring is proportional to the force applied by a spring constant (k). This question can be solved by using the effective spring constant, which is the sum of the individual spring constants in series, and the sum of their reciprocals in parallel. The springs are identical and thus have the same spring constant, which simplifies to k_eq 2*k in series and k_eq 2/k in parallel. We observe that the springs in parallel would have an effective spring constant that is half of the effective spring constant in series. Using Hooke's law, we can conclude that they would be compressed by half the distance.
