¹³Hooke’s Law may be written as F = kx without the negative sign, in which case the force (F) is the force applied on the spring from an external source. Here, the negative sign represents the spring’s reaction force to being displaced (the restoring force). A spring’s reaction force always opposes the direction of displacement: compress a spring, and it pushes back on you; stretch a spring, and it pulls back. A negative sign is the mathematically symbolic way of expressing the opposing direction of a vector.