Home▸Nature & Climate▸Ripple Tank: 2D Wave Equation & Interference

Ripple Tank: 2D Wave Equation & Interference

A real 2D wave-equation ripple tank: click or drag to create disturbances, place continuous oscillating sources to see interference fringes, and watch waves reflect off the tank walls.

Nature & Climate2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted💧 Water ⇄ 3D version

Details

CategoryNature & Climate

RenderingCanvas 2D

DifficultyModerate

Target FPS60

ControlsClick or drag on the tank to drop disturbance pulses into the water (Pulse/drag mode); switch to Place source mode and click to plant up to 6 continuous oscillating sources, or use the Two-source interference button for an instant classic setup. Sliders adjust wave speed, damping, pulse strength, and new-source frequency/amplitude; buttons clear the sources or calm the water back to rest.

wave equationripple tankinterferencefinite differencewave physicsreflectionsuperposition2d

Related simulations

Gerstner Ocean Waves SimulationExplore realistic ocean waves created using GLSL shaders! Adjust wind speed and storm…

Shifting Continental Plates – A Dynamic ModelExplore the powerful forces shaping our planet as you adjust the speed of plate movement and…

Rainbow & OpticsAtmospheric light scattering — rainbow formation, Rayleigh scattering, interactive sun position. ⊞ All 424 in Nature & Climate →

This is the 2D companion to the 3D Interactive Ocean simulation. Where the 3D version fakes a swell with a stack of Gerstner waves purely for looks, this ripple tank solves a real, discretized 2D wave equation frame by frame: every grid cell's height reacts to its four neighbours through a finite-difference Laplacian, so disturbances genuinely propagate outward, reflect off the tank's fixed walls, and interfere with each other. Click or drag to drop pulses into the water, or place continuous oscillating sources to build interference fringes.

⚙ Under the hood

A real 2D wave-equation ripple tank, top-down: click or drag to drop disturbances into the water, place continuous oscillating sources to build classic two-source interference fringes, and watch waves reflect off the tank's fixed walls -- unlike the 3D Interactive Ocean's Gerstner-wave swell, every ripple here comes from a genuine finite-difference solve of the wave PDE.

wave equationripple tankinterferencefinite differencewave physicsreflectionsuperposition2d

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install