If you throw a stick into the water it will create straight ripples on the sides, and round ripples near the ends. Ripples often spread out in circles, but this isn’t the only possibility. Eventually, the ripples use up all the energy from the rock and the splash, and shrink until we can no longer see them. And that’s how the ripple travels away from your rock – a bit like a human wave around a stadium.ĭragging neighbouring water molecules up and down is hard work, and slowly uses up energy, so the ripples get smaller as they get further away. That’s what creates the peaks and troughs you see on the surface of the water. When they move up, they drag the other molecules next to them up – then they move down, dragging the molecules next to them down too. But during a ripple, the water molecules don’t move away from the rock, as you might expect. You might already know that everything you can touch is made up of lots of tiny molecules, which are themselves made up of even smaller parts called atoms.Ĭurious Kids: is everything really made of molecules? And the ripples that you see in the river are small waves carrying away the energy from where you threw the rock. Light and sound also move in waves, though we can’t see that directly. For example, the waves you see at the beach are formed by energy from the wind. One way energy can move around is by forming waves. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our very best. Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation, which gives children the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts.
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