Waves and Beaches

Some Surprising Facts from Waves and Beaches A tide is actually a long wave, having a period of 43,000 seconds (12 hours and 25 minutes) and a wave length half the circumference of the earth There is no such thing as undertow, but rip tides are very real The combination of the celestial mechanics of earth rotation and gravitation, the sun’s radiation, and the resultant action of wind on the surface of the earth’s oceans raises waves and drives the earth’s currents As long as there are waves, beaches are always changing Rogue waves aren’t just really, really big waves; they can also manifest as extra-deep troughs, or holes, into which a ship falls before being overwhelmed by the next crest The Statistics of a Stationary Random Process is a theory that states that one wave in 23 is over 2 times the height of an average wave, one in 1,175 is over 3 times the average height, and only one in 300,000 exceeds 4 times the average height