wave lab

Guiding Question: How do waves travel in various liquids???

Hypothesis: I think that the thickness or density of the various liquids will effect the way the waves travel. The thicker or denser the liquid is that harder it will be for the waves to travel and the less dense the liquid the easier it will be for liquids to travel.

Materials: Honey, hand sanitizer, soda, salt water, and regular water

Procedure: I’m going to fill the tub with the various liquids and use something like clay to create a disturbance. I’m going to time how fast the wave travels and how long it takes for it to get from one side of the tube to the other. Using honey, hand sanitizer, soda, salt water, and normal water I’m going to observe the behavior and calculate the frequency of waves

materials	observations	Frequency
Honey	Really won’t make waves and is so thick that	0
Hand sanitizer	Doesn’t make waves! (too dense?)	0
Soda	A little less than 1 wave per second. (Bubbles??)	1
Salt water (100 mL)	About 1 waves per second (same as water)	2
Water	About 2 waves per second	2

Observations: I knew form the begging that the density would play a huge part in the way waves traveled through a liquid and therefore the frequency. I had predicted that the honey would make either really slow waves or no waves at all and that the water was going to make really nice high frequency waves. The soda and salt water I had predicted to act a lot like the water but it was the hand sanitizer that surprised me. I had expected it to make really slow low frequency waves and act more like water then honey. But instead it didn’t make any waves at all and was on heck of a cleanup. The honey would do anything and didn’t make anything even resembling a wave. The salt water had the same frequency as water and the soda acted more like water but it had a lower frequency.

Data analysis: This was a fairly successful lab. I really noticed how the density affected the waves to the point where the liquid was so dense it couldn’t make waves.

Conclusion: How do waves travel in different liquids? From this lab I can definitely conclude that the density of an object really affects the frequency and wave behavior. My hypothesis was definitely correct. While I was doing my tests some of the honey was so dense that it stuck to my hands and when it finally dripped off my hands it landed on top of the other honey and then slowly sunk in to the blog rather than making a wave. And then other liquids like the salt water or soda acted just like the regular water and made a ton of waves and had a higher frequency. It wasn’t too surprising that the density would play a huge part in frequency and the way waves travel

Further inquiry: I feel like there were a lot of things that could have gone better. It’s really hard to count the frequency by yourself, so I feel like some of my data may be a bit off. Another things is that I didn’t measure the amount of liquid I put in every time so that could cause the results to vary. Overall I felt like this was a really successful lab and I want to find out how the density of a liquid effects the wave length and other components of a wave.