Making Waves Lab

Guiding Questions:
When water is dropped from a pipette into a pan of water, how does the wave behave?
What properties does a mechanical wave have?
How do waves interact with each other and with solid objects in their paths.

Hypothesis: Waves can be constructive and destructive to each other, so parallel waves will increase each others' strength but when not in sync they will colide and stop the energy. The waves will ripple out from the drop of water, they will reflect off of solid materials but will have some of their energy absorbed.

Materials:
Water
Modeling Clay
Ripple Tank
2 Pipettes
Paper Towels
Cork

Procedure:

1.  Fill ripple tank with water.
2. Fill dropper with water and drop in various places of the pan. 
3. Record observations for each place you drop the water and the various obstacles are placed.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3.
5.  Repeat 2-4 with cork for each time you changed the position but this time add cork.

Data Analysis:

(I will scan the tables at school, my scanner is broken)

As I suspected the solid objects reflected and slightly absorbed the waves, the cork acted in some ways like the paper towel and in some the clay, it absorbed the energy but because it was solid it reflected it as well, the paper towel absorbed and moved with the energy of the waves. After bouncing around for a bit, the energy of the wave slowly diminished.

Conclusion: 

The waves were somewhat predictable, for one thing they always moved away in ripples from the spot where the water was dropped and for another, they Would always reflect off of the objects or be absorbed, the objects when arranged in a certain way can contain the wave's energy and keep it strong and concentrated like what I did when I arranged the clan and cork around the place where the water was dropped.