Wave investigation

For our in class investigation we observed the behavior and how waves interact with each other when put up against one, two, or no barriers. My partner Marko and I used clay barriers and a tub of water to investigate. We started with no walls and watched what happened when the waves met each other. Both my partner and I were expecting when the waves met that they would fall apart and not go any farther, but instead they moved over each other and made these really cool patterns in the water until they hit the wall and bounced back again. We tried this several more times using different points and barriers and we can conclude that waves with no barriers with move freely and when they collide do not have much of an effect on each other. Next we experimented with what would happen to the wave when they met a barrier. Personally this was one of my favorite tests and also probably one of the most successful. Like with the free waves we tried our experiment from different angels and with different obstacles. We had predicted that once the waves hit the obstacle it would send them back the way they came like when the waves hit the wall of the tub. We had geared ourselves up to be splashed when surprisingly the wave split in two, avoided the barrier, and then slowly re-formed and hit the wall. This caused something called diffraction. We played with this for long time and found that no matter what the waves will always find a way to move around a barrier. Finally we tested how the waves would react when put up against two barriers. The results were a lot like our previous test with one barrier in the fact that they found a way to squeeze out and keep moving, causing diffraction. Then we got the idea to see what would happen to a wave in an unclosed space. we arranged the barriers in a corner and when we tested this we found that the waves take the shape of the enclosed space and continue moving, which surprised both Marco and I. We experimented with this for a while and found that that was the case no matter what the shape of the enclosed space.
Overall I think this was a really successful experiment. I learned a lot about the way waves move and had fun doing it. I'm glad we preformed an experiment instead of taking notes because I have a clear visual of how waves move and exactly how tough they really are.