Practical activities designed for use in the classroom with 11- to 19-year-olds.
In partnership with
Basic experiments with ripple tanks
Introducing the ripple tank, a powerful tool that can help students visualize wave behaviour in general. By pointing out that wavefronts are perpendicular to the direction of motion of the wave, you can link ripple tank experiments to experiments in optics, where rays show the direction of motion of the light.
This is a set of experiments on wave reflections. Students are introduced to ripple tanks and gain confidence in using them, by doing some simple experiments with pulses.
Experiments
Simple circular pulses in ripple tanks
Reflection of a straight pulse by a barrier
Reflection of a circular pulse by a barrier
Reflection at a parabolic barrier
Reflection of ripples at a circular barrier
Vibrator to generate continuous waves
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