Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Is there a way I can imitate certain speeds of waves or wave patterns? In my experiment, I am planning on filling a paint tray with sand and water and bob the water up and down in a certain way in order to see how wave patterns effect how sand builds up to form and shape a beach. If you can get back to me soon that would be great because I need to be ready to know how my experiment will be set up by November 8.

Hi!

I remember in high school physics the teacher had a motorized wave generator to visualize what happened when two wave fronts collided, but we weren’t studying beaches. To properly control a wave form in water, however, and study how it alters the pattern of sand deposition on a beach, I think you may have to buy or build a motor-driven wave maker. I attached a paper that has information about making wave generators for lab use.

Also, I think a paint tray is probably too small a water volume for accurate measurements, but if you could find an especially large one it might work. Have you tried it with sand at one end to see what effect the waves had? How did you plan to make waves? By rocking the tray? What would you vary—the speed and amplitude of the rocking?

The problem with doing it by hand is controlling the movement accurately for the length of time, whatever that may be, required to cause a change in the ‘beach’. If you could even rig up a manual crank that would push a rectangular plate back and forth at one end of the tray, I think you’d have a better chance of getting the kind of control you need.

Do you have any friends who are engineering students with access to a fabrication workshop? This would be a fun challenge.

I think this is a really cool project and I hope you get it to work. Keep us posted on this thread with your plans and progress and we will continue to try and help you.

Best wishes,

Sybee

Hello scrivner073,
SciB has given you some good ideas. What project are you performing and what are you testing? Based on what you have stated, it sounds like you are doing this project on building beaches: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure. Do you have a hypothesis yet?

Here is a different project on how Tsunamis work, and it gives a good description of the procedure on how to set up your experiment in a plastic bin as you were describing: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure

When you are setting up your wave patterns, you will need to know the different causes of creating waves, for instance the velocity (speed), depth of the water, and the location of the beach in relation to the source of the wave (distance). You can determine your setting of these things ahead of time by doing some research on the behavior of waves. Here are some resources and projects:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p016.shtml
http://coastalcare.org/educate/waves/
http://tsunami.noaa.gov/education.html

Hoped that helped! Please post your other questions in this same thread. I look forward to hearing how your project comes along.