How a Ball Boumces

Today we did a lab on how a how a wave reacts when it hits a impassable barrier. To test this without making a big mess we used different density and size balls as our waves. We used a flat wall as our barrier, and we used our hands as the energy that causes the ball to move. In this test we took 3 different size and density balls and we rolled each into a wall 3 times and observe how they react when they hit the wall. to record how the react we rolled them across a piece of paper and recorded their path with different color markers.

First we rolled a big low density Styrofoam ball into the wall 3 times and recorded how it bounced back with a blue marker. This we found wasn't very fast when we rolled it but bounced easily. Then we rolled a medium size medium golf ball into the wall 3 times and recorded its path. This time even though it came out of our hands faster it was slower bouncing off the wall. Last we took our small high density marble and rolled it into the wall 3 times, recording its path. This time it came our of our hand fastest but when it hit the wall it barely managed to roll off the page.

After doing this experiment I learnt that the higher the density the faster it rolls, but the worse it bounces. Which in waves would mean for a fast wave you would need lots of density, but if that hit a impassible barrier it would just slop around. But with the slower low density wave it would bounce back and continue going.