Making waves

I have a video on diffraction that I'm in the process of putting together and I want to make a wave table like the one I used in high school with Mr. Quail at Cleveland Heights High.

I have a couple of different options for the water containment device... I could either make one with a bit of leftover plexiglass I have here, or the more likely option I'll just use a large glass baking dish. Good enough in my book I think.

Next up is making the waves.

I originally thought I could use some servos I have lying about controlled by an Arduino. The problem with that is they are way too unresponsive to make a good stream of waves.

Then I thought about hard drives. I have a bunch of old and decommissioned drives I would be able to pull a motor out of. Except for the fact that all of them seem to use 3-phase brushless motors. Sure, I could whip up some circuitry that might be able to control one, but that's a lot of work for something that isn't the reason for the production in the first place.

Then I tore down a CPU fan I had safely ensconced in a box. I figured that might be a simple brushed SC motor. Nope. It seems to be some type of reluctance motor since there seems to be nothing moving except the metal shaft itself.

Maybe I just need to make a manual solution to this problem.

Just something that'll bob in and out of the water to make a string of waves.

This should not be as annoying as this seems to be.