– Why dont incoming and outgoing water waves cancel each other out and become flat water?
In: Physics
If the two waves were the same height above sea level, same depth below sea level, traveling over a level sea bed, and we’re moving at the same speed but directly opposite one another, then they might cancel each other out. But since an outgoing wave neither has the volume, size, or speed of an incoming wave, that’s not likely to happen.
Waves can add and subtract from each other. When two waves heading towards each other overlap some parts will be the sum of each other in the negative end, some will be the difference of each each other (if they are equal this is zero, and some parts will be the sum of each other in the positive direction
One is/isn’t greater than the other. If they were equal yes(maybe?).
They do, don’t they? http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/py105/WaveInterference.html
* Waves only interact with each other at the point where they meet.
* So two waves that start apart from each other can pass through each other and be the same when they come out the other side.
* However, they will interfere with each other at the point the meet.
* In order to cancel out and be totally flat however, they need to be exactly opposite of each other and this rarely happens.
* They might get close to opposite and become very small, but likely not totally cancel each other out.
* We can create waves to artificially cancel other waves out, this is how noise cancelling headphones work.
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