Making Waves

Investigate the interaction of liquids of different densities and experiment with wave patterns. Oil sits on top of the water when because oil is less dense than water. This means that the number of oil molecules in any given volume is fewer than the number of water molecules in the same volume. As the bottle is rocked, your students observe wave patterns, similar to the waves one might see at the beach. Rocking the bottle in different ways creates different patterns. When waves meet, they may cancel each other out or combine to make even bigger waves.