Ball/Wave Barrier Bouncing Wall Pattern Lab

What happens to a wave as it hits a surface it cannot pass through?

When a wave hits a surface it cannot pass through it bounces back, in the opposite direction creating patterns. Depending on the angle of incident, the angle between the incoming wave and the imaginary perpendicular line, the angle of reflection was formed. The angle of reflection is the angle between the reflecting wave Although we did our lab with balls and not waves, we could still see some patterns being created when the balls bounced back from the wall/vertical surface. When we traced the balls path, we noticed that after the ball encountered a barrier it would slow down and lose energy.

Does energy (density of the ball) affect the waves path?

In the lab Tristan and I did we didn't notice anything about the balls having different paths because of different densities. We used three types of balls; the small metallic ball, the big marble and the biggest styrofoam ball. When we traced the balls it looked like they all took approximately the same paths, just that they were thrown at different angles. However, I think that it would make sense for a ball to travel differently with more density than with less density, so maybe if we had tested how the balls bounce back from a meters space instead of just the width of an A3 piece of paper we might have ended up with some different and more accurate results.

How is the angle at which the ball (wave) hits the wall related to the angle at which it bounces back?

The angle the ball was thrown at affected how it bounced back majorly. The angle of incidence causes the angle of reflection, so the reflected wave or the path of the ball after it hits the wall is the reflection of the angle at which the wave first hit the barrier, or the ball first hit the wall. The angle of this action is the angle of incidence.What Tristan and I noticed was that it was kind of as if there was a line at the point where the ball hit the wall. We later learned that this line is called the reflection line. Then, the ball would follow the exact path back, but on the other side of the line- reflection. It's kind of like symmetry, since the two lines were almost symmetric.