Discussion of Results:
With the observations we made from the sequence of pictures, we can conclude that once a drop hits a body of water, a depression is formed. The depression has very symmetrical from and looks almost bullet-shaped. This depression widens and deepens as time goes by. We observed that this depression then contracts and loses its shape to form an upside down volcano shape, which is flat at the bottom and evenly sloped on the sides. This crater shrinks and then a drop appears which rises to form a pillar. This pillar rises and a secondary drop then separates from the pillar at the top.For this project we then switched to using a Apple II computer running Intervalometer 2. After several trials, we learned that the computer was not sensitive enough to detect the photogate. We then switched our setup to include a modified milk drop setup using the black boxes and photogate but keeping the overhead lighting and the computer. In the final photo session, we didn’t use dye and instead took pictures of the water splashes since the dye made things more difficult and time consuming. This setup proved to be our most successful and was the setup used to capture the majority of our images.
Throughout this project, we discovered that this project was more difficult than we had imagined. Things such as the water level in the container, the amount of time the dye took to go through the dropper and the height of camera all had to be factored into the project. This turned out to be quite a challenge for us. The constant changing of the setup also proved to be a challenged as it took up some of the time needed to take pictures. Some sources of error in our determination of the delay could be attributed to the fact that the water level was always changing. This meant that even though the delay was the same in two pictures, they weren’t necessarily at the same stage of development. The changing of water levels could have affected our delays by a small amount. The time changed about one millisecond for every cm change in hieght.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, we were able to achieve our goals in this project by taking pictures throughout the time interval from drop to spout at equal time intervals. Because of the relatively big time interval (10 milliseconds), some developments in the splash were not seen. With additional experimentation, we could examine the splashes with smaller time intervals to see the changes. All in all though, the changes in the splash were extremely interesting to see and to take pictures of and we were successful in meeting our goal.