Wicked Wave Walls: The Effect of Different Types of Walls on the Distance a Wave Will Travel

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this experiment was to test the effectiveness of various wall designs on shortening the distance a standard size wave would travel. Methods/Materials Wood, pulleys, water, box, brick, string. I created a pulley system that would lift a piece of wood out of a box containing water to create a standard sized wave. Using three different wall designs that I created, I was able to tell what type of wall worked the best at preventing a wave from propagating the farthest. Results My results proved my hypothesis to be correct. For example, the vertical wall was nearly equivalent to having no wall at all. Also, the vertical wall with holes worked a little bit better, and the vertical wall with a board at a 90 degree angle on top worked the best at stopping the wave. Conclusions/Discussion The vertical wall with a board at a 90 degree angle on top, worked the best at stopping a wave. If a community wanted to protect itself from large waves, the city could build this type of wall because my experiment showed that it was the most effective at stopping waves from traveling the farthest.

Competition history

• CSEF 2016 Aerodynamics/ Hydrodynamics (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0116

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Physics and Astronomy projects
• CSEF Physics and Astronomy projects
• Every CSEF 2016 project