The wave experiment

This is the first experiment we did, and this is the first sketch without any barriers. As you can see, we caused waves on two opposite sides of the tray. The waves move quite freely, and they do cross each other's way, and this is called a compression. The two waves compressed together. We tried to create an equal disturbance, to see how would the waves of the same frequency react once they met each other, in the middle of the tray.

This is the second experiment we did, and we caused the waves on the opposite sides of the tray, but they were both on the right. We wanted to see whether the waves would fill the whole tray, or not. Again, we caused an equal disturbance on both sides, and the waves did cross each other, but didn't occupy the whole tray. Our hypothesis was that in order to make the waves travel further, and fill the whole tray, you nees to apply a stornger force, and apply a bigger disturbance.

This is our third, and last experiment without any barriers. To this experiment we applied a little bit more force, and caused a bigger disturbance, and, sure enough, the waves filled the whole tray, with corssing each other, because, as we know, waves will travel in all directions, depending on how strong the force is, and whether there is any force holding the wave back.

This is our first experiment with one barrier. As you can see from the sketch, waves go in all directions, unless there is a force holding it back, and in this case, the force is the barrier that we have put in the middle of the tray. The waves couldn't go past the barrier, so they went through the place they did have. Strangely enough, the waves didn't affect the small patch of water hidden behind the barrier. This part of the tray remained perfectly still.

For this experiment we made the disturbance exactly opposite from each other, and the barrier exactly in the middle of the tray. What we expected to happen did happen. The waves stopped where the barrier was, but went through the two little gaps that they had. Here, they just had a small collison.

This is similar to the experiment we have drawn above, except we have just moved the source of the disturbance and the barrier a little to the left. As you see, the waves had a similar reaction, accept they had quite a big collison over the barrier. The waves couldn't go past the barrier, so they went to the big space above it, and compressed.

This is the first experiment that we did with two barriers, and as you can see, we have just left a small space in the middle of the two barriers for the waves to pass through. The waves stopped at the barriers, and since they didin't have a lot of space in between to pass thorugh, there was just a small collison between the two waves.

For this experiment, we wanted to see how a  wave would react is if it just had a tiny spot to move in. For this experiment, we applied the same force to both sides, to make the disturbances equal. We have realized that the wave that was trapped in a small place had a higher frequency, because it wasn't as spread out as the other wave, which had most of the tray to move, and spread the energy around.

This last experiment was our last one, and we wanted to have some fun with it, so we created this interesting design, where we put one barrier exactly in the middle of the tray, and the other one just a little below. We caused the disturbances righ behind each of the barriers. Of course, as seen in the above example, the wave that was behind the barrier that was closer to it, had a bit higher frequency. Since the waves had quite some space for collison, they did cross over each other just a little bit.

A photo we took during the experiment