Walk along the cliffline & beach in Stohl
About a week ago, I went on a lovely walk with my parents, and here are the pictures. How I love the beach! As I am looking more at ripples…
Tag: Kiel fjord
April weather in September (Great for #WaveWatching and cloud watching!)
Minutes after drawing the illustration to the “you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop” quote I shared yesterday in the most beautiful…
Jellyfish and capillary waves
Sometimes the best wave watching doesn’t happen how you expect it to happen. Look at this jellyfish, bobbing about in the surface of Kiel fjord. Can you spot the circular…
Fog showing stream lines around cruise liner
Whenever I get out of my house and it looks like this, I am slightly disappointed because it means that the wave watching that morning will not be ideal. I…
Observing the shape of shallow water waves on a beach
When I go wave watching back home in Kiel, I tend to be drawn to other places than this particular one, but sometimes you find gold in the places you…
Walk to & visit at GEOMAR as wave watching occasion
These very long and regular wave crests were caused by a ship — they are one side of the V of a ship’s wake that’s about to reach the sea…
Feathery wake approaching! #WaveWatching in Kiel Holtenau
A week ago already, Frauke and I went on an evening walk in Kiel Holtenau. Beautiful wave watching to be done there as always! Here you see the one side…
Some port of Kiel #wavewatching: A feathery wake getting fanned out and bunched together!
Wakes are always interesting to watch. But usually, I am showing wakes of ships going straight ahead. So today, I have something cool for you: The wake of a ship…
Spontaneous adventures are the best! Today involving a trip on a historic ship, some sight seeing on Kiel fjord and a bit of Lindy Hop
I’m lucky to have great friends like Alice, who was spontaneous enough to go on a mini cruise with me today (for which I was only given tickets when I…
Gravity waves and capillary waves on Kiel fjord
Yesterday, I took some pretty pictures of a red balloon floating on Kiel fjord, some seagulls swimming close to it, and — of course, most importantly — the seagull’s waves.…
Spotting both the V-shaped and turbulent wake of a faraway ship on a calm day
The title says it all, I guess ;-) In the picture above, you can still see the ship on the left, and having seen the ship, I am sure you…
Determining the slope of sea surface via the reflection of a structure
(Disclaimer: The physics the title refers to are somewhere in the second half of the blog post when I am done rambling) In case you are wondering why I am…
Same beach, different waves. Why?
Here is a puzzle for you. Walking along a beach, first, the waves looked like this: One wave breaking at a time. That’s the situation you also see in the…
Windy days at Holtenau locks: Now THAT’s a turbulent wake!
Now that the weather is nice and sunny again, here is what it looked like only last Saturday. It wasn’t even really stormy, but windy enough so that the ships…
Early morning Kiel fjord #wavewatching with the help of condensation trails
When it’s all foggy and there are hardly any waves, sometimes help comes from the most unexpected places. Today: condensation trails that are reflected on the water! Isn’t it interesting…
Wake comparisons: Row boat and motor boat
I just love this picture: The two boats in the front are going at the same speed (the trainer is driving right next to the person in the row boat…
Night swimming… or at least night-time wave watching
Looking at Kiel fjord in the picture below, it is quite obvious from the shape of the waves that those waves are some ship’s wake. Why is that obvious? Because…
Intriguing interference pattern of waves
Do you see those weird traces going away from us, perpendicular to the wave crests, but in parallel to the bright stripes on the sea floor (I talked about those…
Wakes by birds, a row boat, and a SUP board
After talking a lot about turbulent wakes this week, here are two pictures of different kinds of wakes. They are of course turbulent, too, but on a very different scale.…
#wakewatching seems to become a thing for me
Usually I look at wakes when ships are long gone, or at least leaving. Today, let’s look at one where the ship is coming towards us and we see how…
Where has all the water gone?
You might have noticed that in today’s first post there was a lot less water in the Kiel fjord than in yesterday’s post (starting this year strong on the blogging front! I…
Ferry sailed past, wake perpendicular to wind. Cool interference pattern!
Guess the title says it all today ;-) Just kidding. Below you see a movie of a neat interference pattern I observed this morning. The situation is similar to yesterday in…
When the ferry has long sailed past and the waves start appearing out of the fog…
Ending 2018 in style and exactly the way I want to continue in 2019: wave watching and dipping into Kiel fjord! 2018 has been an exciting year and a lot…
The first autumn storm and its impact on dye tracer and water level
Last night it rained a lot. So the first thing to do this morning was to check what that had done to my green lake! The dye is now a…
Wave watching as official part of the program of a conference on chemistry and physics education!
Yes, you read that correctly. The German Society for Chemistry and Physics Education (GDCP)’s annual conference started out with a 2 hour cruise on Kiel fjord, during which the participants…
Wave watching at the Kiel Holtenau locks
So many people are surprised when I speak of wave watching as of a “real activity”. But to me it is! So I am going to talk you through a…
Best investment into my mental health?
Joining a local club that gives me access to this whenever I like…
Awesome reflection of a wave train
This is a really good way to train your eyes to spot reflections of waves: watch a single wave train hit a sea wall: Please don’t get sea sick when…
More wakes
And now you thought I was done showing you wakes? Ha, I was not nearly done! I told you, watching waves makes me happy :-) And from Stena Germanica’s sun…
Expedition learning
Last week, we ran an “expedition learning” course for 17-year olds. They were separated into several groups, working on different topics, and mine (unsurprisingly) worked on waves. You can see…
Wakes and what they do to the sun’s reflection
When I said that wake watching made me happy last week, did you really think those were all the wakes I was going to show you? Ha! No, I have…
Reflected wake
The best ship-watching of the year happens during Kiel Week (even if I do a fair bit of ship-watching year round ;-)) But this year, I was absolutely fascinated with…
Locks at Kiel Canal
The locks at Kiel canal always make for interesting weekend strolls. I love watching ships! Especially armed with my favourite app, VesselFinder (similar to marine traffic described here), because it…
Duckies, a drama and a wake
Let me tell you the story of the picture below. I was walking along Kiel fjord with some friends and we saw this mama duck with all those tiny cute…
Diffraction
I find it really fascinating to watch waves being bent by objects in their way. See how the wave is spreading out from the little slit? Or here how waves…
Surfactants
When I was talking about foam stripes the other day, you might have noticed that the foam stripe wasn’t a foam stripe all the way, but became “just a stripe”.…
Waves reflecting on a sea wall
I really like it when waves reach a sea wall at an angle, because the resulting criss-cross looks so cool :-) And especially cool when you see it gradually building…
Foam stripes
One sunny morning, I noticed The Stripe again: Running all the way up and down the coast. In places where there is a large fetch the stripe is clearly foamy:…
Playing with a ROV
The KiFo owns a ROV that — until now — has never been fully operational. But since I like a challenge (and have a really skilled research assistant who really deserves…
Expedition learning
In July I will be involved in teaching an “expedition learning” course for a week. It will be all about coastal protection in the Kiel region, so two colleagues and…
More funny waves
I think I might need to find a new route to walk along the Kiel fjord. When I was walking — in the most beautiful sunshine! — with my friend…
Nonlinear effects in shallow water waves
I recently googled for something related to the shape of waves and came across a photo of a wave that caught my eye, and it took me to a journey that…
More foam stripes
As you might have noticed, I am getting a little obsessed with those foam stripes. Another day, a little more wind, looking up the coast: And down the coast… Do…
Funny waves on Kiel fjord
The other day I noticed a funny wave pattern on Kiel fjord. Unfortunately I only took a picture where you see what caused the wave pattern: A step that was…
Foam stripes mystery — closer to figuring out what’s going on?
I think I might be getting closer to understanding the foam stripe mystery. Remember how we’ve always observed them going in parallel to the coast? Yesterday I saw this again,…
Foam stripes again…
…because they follow the coastline so nicely and I still don’t understand what’s going on there…
Ice and waves
Waves going through very fresh, still flexible ice. What an exciting topic :-) We had a first look at the picture below in the last blog post already, when we…
Ice forming on Kiel fjord
One thing I really like is watching ice form. Well, maybe not watching the actual freezing (don’t have the attention span for that) but looking at all the different stages.…
Shelter from the storm
Shelter from the storm, no, shelter from the breeze. But we clearly see the sheltering effect of that boat shed on the wind waves… Same thing below. And wasn’t that…
Wind waves
No matter how often I’ve seen it, I still find it absolutely fascinating how the tiniest structures can have a really visible effect on the downwind wave field. Like for…
Refraction of light in moving water — why stuff seems to be jumping around
I was waking along Kiel fjord one morning and noticed a stone “jump” on the ground as waves went over it (and actually, that observation was the motivation to dive…
Those foam stripes parallel to the coast — again!
I think I might be getting obsessed with those stripes parallel to the coast. We saw them as foam stripes, eel grass stripes and now today: leaf stripes! Or should it…
Interference of one wave field with its reflection and a second wave field
All you regular readers of my book and my blog surely recognize what’s going on below? Yes! A wave field comes in at an angle to the pier and gets…
Wave-watching
Do you know the feeling when you, even on the most beautiful of days, want to get out of the pretty parks as quickly as possible so you can finally…
Wavelength dependency of wave-object-interactions
Wavelength dependency of wave-object-interactions. What a title! :-) But that is exactly what I observed over the enormous timespan of three full minutes (as shown by the time stamps of…
Reflections on reflections
When we think about reflections in water, we usually think of calm lakes and trees on the shore opposite to us. Or clouds. Or at least that’s what I think…
Surface films dampen waves
On Tuesday I talked about sea weed accumulating close to the sea wall in Kiel fjord, and I showed you the picture below. One thing that I found really interesting…
Foam stripes parallel to the coast, take 2
I recently got a new comment on my blog post on foam stripes parallel to the coast, and since you guys hardly ever comment on my blog (I like getting…