– Why dont incoming and outgoing water waves cancel each other out and become flat water?
In: Physics
* 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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