When you meet a hard boundary, the reflection starts
When I look at the picture above, I see basically three different zones on the surface of the lake.
The yellow zone, which is under the direct influence of the wind, where the water is full of small waves, and then two other zones.
In the red zone, the water isn’t under direct influence of the wind any more, we see clear, parallel wave crests propagating towards the shore. I’ve marked some of them below.
While they are still to the left of the wooden edge, not much happens. But once they hit the edge, we enter the “green zone”: The incoming wave crests get reflected at the wooden edge. They start propagating out onto the lake, getting longe and longer over time, while the red wave crests continue running further and further into the green zone, so we get interference between the incoming and reflected wave crests. Pretty cool! :)
Fun #WaveWatching today! Reflections all the way....and then the boundary suddenly ends! - Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching says:
[…] details in this recent post, but in a nutshell: The wave crests marked in red are approaching the beach and wooden edge, and […]