I was wondering if the mass of an object can be measured by the effect it has on a body of water if it was dropped from a certain height?

Question

The question:

Height of Water 'Splashing'

asks about the height of the splash when an object is dropped into water, but there are other parameters that can depend on the mass and velocity of the object e.g. the shape of the splash, the horizontal distance reached, the amplitude of waves radiating outwards and so on.

So the question is: Is it possible to measure the mass of an object based only
on the effect it has on the body of water (i.e: a swimming pool) it is dropped in (such as the behavior of the wave oscillations, etc)?

Answer 1

It would be difficult, because the shape of the object would strongly affect the way it interacts with the water when it hits. However if all of the masses had the same shape but varied only in density, and if all other factors (speed of impact, water composition, wind, temperature, etc.) were kept constant, then it should be possible to correlate the mass of the object with the spectra of waves formed by the splash.

On the other hand, it would be possible to roughly estimate the mass of an object that hits the water after making reasonable assumptions of its shape, density, and velocity (e.g., a meteor or an aircraft), from observations of the wave spectra.