Use Hooke's law and plug in known values:

Each spring will stretch the same amount,

Use Hooke's law:

Each spring stretched the same amount, , for a total stretch of .

Plug in values:

Solve for :

Use Hooke's law:

Each spring stretched the same amount, , for a total stretch of .

Plug in values:

Solve for :

Now find the stretch distance if the springs were used in parallel.

Plug in values:

Solve for :

Since the mass in in equilibrium, this tells us the net force .  Writing the forces acting on the mass,

.  This allows us to solve for the spring constant.

From the definition of the spring potential, 

Plugging in the given values lets us arrive at a calculated compression,

We can calculate the energy needed to be stored in the spring from the change in potential energy that the object experiences:

Where our change in height is going to be the distance between its high point and the point when the spring is compressed. Furthermore, this change in potential energy will be equal to the energy stored in the spring:

 was used since we're dealing with vertical distances. Setting these equal to each other:

We can also develop an expression for the change in height:

Substituting this back into our expression:

Distributing and rearranging:

Plugging in our values, we get:

Using the quadratic formula, we get:

 or 

Where a positive distance represents compression of the spring, and a negative distance represents extension of the spring. Therefore, the positive distance is our answer.

When the elevator is at rest, we can use the following expression to determine the spring constant:

Where the force is simply the weight of the spring:

Rearranging for the constant:

Now solving for the constant:

Now applying the same equation for when the elevator is accelerating upward:

Where a is the acceleration due to gravity PLUS the acceleration of the elevator. Rearranging for the displacement:

Plugging in our values:

If you're confused why we added the acceleration of the elevator to the acceleration due to gravity. Think about the situation practically. When you are riding an elevator and it begins to accelerate upward, your body feels heavier. That's because your relative weight has increased due to the increased normal force due to a relative increase in acceleration.

The important part of this problem is to not get bogged down in all of the unnecessary information. All we need to know to solve this problem is the spring constant and what force is being applied after 8s. Since the spring potential energy expression is a state function, what happens in between 0s and 8s is noncontributory to the question being asked. Therefore, we can determine the displacement of the spring using:

Rearranging for , we get:

As previously mentioned, we will be using the force that is being applied at :

Then using the expression for potential energy of a spring:

Where potential energy is the work we are looking for. Plugging in our values:

First, let's begin with the force expression for a spring:

Rearranging for displacement, we get:

Then we can substitute this into the expression for potential energy of a spring:

We should note that this is the maximum potential energy the spring will achieve. Also, we know that the maximum potential energy of a spring is equal to the maximum kinetic energy of a spring:

Therefore:

Substituting in the expression for kinetic energy:

Now rearranging for force, we get:

We have all of these values, so we can solve the problem:

We can use Newton's second law to solve this problem:

There are two forces acting on the block, the force of gravity and the force from the spring. If we designate an upward force as being positive, we can then say:

Rearranging for acceleration, we get:

Plugging in our values, we get:

Therefore, the block is already at equilibrium and will not move upon being released.