Meteors and Waves
Presenter: Yuh-Ruey Chen
Student, Ronald Reagan High School
摘要：
Problem: How is the wavelength, speed, height, and time affected when different weights of constant volume are dropped into water.
In this experiment, I dropped four different weights into the water tank to measure the different impacts to the waves. I used the lightest weight as the control group. The weight was the manipulated variable, while the wavelength, height, time, and speed responded.
When a solid object is dropped into water, the impact and submersion of the object creates waves moving outward from the point of impact.
One might assume that simply dropping heavier objects of constant volume into the water would generate taller, faster, and longer waves.
In order to limit the rebounding wave factors, I dropped the weight box at a corner. Since the water was contained in the tank and the rebounding waves would dampen the traveling wave force, I only measured the first few waves for each trial. I noticed that the wave raveled so fast that I had to use the camcorder to tape the experiment. This gave the approximated measurements of the impacts which were consistent with the actual values derived from the formulas.
I concluded that the heavier the object, the faster the speed, the shorter the wavelength, and the taller the height, each by specific factors.