The speed of waves

Amplitude is another factor, which might change the speed of the wave, if the container is dropped from another height for example a very high drop obviously the wave is going to have much more momentum.

Prediction

My prediction is that if I change the amplitude I wont get much of a change in the speed of the wave. I predict this because I have thought about it and have worked out that it can't change. So I predict that by changing the depth of the water in 10-ml intervals I will get more accurate, helpful, results. I will find out if I am right after I have concluded my preliminary work.

Apparatus

? Water container

? Ruler

? Water

? Pencil

? Paper

? Measuring cylinder

Results

The results I've gained I've put into a table, which I show below.

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Attempt 1

Attempt 2

Attempt 3

Attempt 4

Attempt 5

AV

Height 2

2.5

2.3

2.6

2.4

2.1

2.3

Height 4

2.3

2.4

2.4

2.4

2.1

2.3

Height 6

2.4

2.6

2.5

2.3

2.1

2.3

Height 8

2.7

2.5

2.6

2.3

2.1

2.4

Height 10

2.5

2.4

2.3

4.2

2.3

2.7

ANALYSIS

When my graph is looked at its clear to see that the gradient of the line doesn't show any particular increase in gradient. This is because the results I got were similar and so it couldn't change much.

If I was needed to have to talk about how my results faired at the end of the experiment I think that they are very good. I managed to find out after the practical that when the variable changed is the amplitude, it doesn't change the speed of the wave at all. So by understanding that I can conclude that my results are very accurate. The only problem I had was the anomalous result. I was worried about this result, so I did it again, and I got 2.3 this seemed to be a reasonable value in comparison with the other results.

I personally think that the results I gained where correct and I am very happy with the way that the experiment went. The graph shows a smooth curve, which suggest to me, and anyone reading it, that my prediction was very incorrect. I predicted that if I changed the height at which I dropped the container it would change the speed considerably but it didn't so I was wrong.

My conclusion to this experiment would be that the experiment I did didn't really help us to find out the difference in the speeds of waves. So to help us gather better results for this purpose I would suggest another different experiment. I would suggest changing the height of the water. Instead I believe that this would gain much better results. If I had done this experiment I expect that I would have gathered a lot more about the differences in the speed of waves.

Oliver Sloggett-Taylor 5M-Investigation into the speed changes of waves