What is the distance the block traveled before it encountered the spring?

Question

A block starts from rest at the top of a 13.degree incline plane and encounters a spring,of constant 4.5kN/m,rigidly attached to the plane.The blocks mass is 64kg and it compresses the spring by 60cm.

Answer 1

I'll just give you a plan of attack:

1. Figure out how fast the block has to be moving when it hits the spring to compress it that far.

2. Figure out how far the block would have to slide to get moving that fast.

2 can be broken into:

2A. How far does it have to "fall" to gather that much speed?
2B. Given the angle, how far does it travel overall to "fall" that far?