wave – Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Same wind, different waves, or: the influence of fetch length on the size of waves

mglessmer — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 09:49:24 +0000

I just found this picture that I took back in May near my friend Elin’s cabin on an island in western Norway, and it’s a really nice illustration of how the same wind will cause very different waves depending on whether it’s blowing over the sea for many kilometres, or over a puddle for only […]

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Awesome reflection of a wave train

mglessmer — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 08:21:23 +0000

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 — about halfway through — I’m moving the camera around :-)

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Wake of the Stena Germanica — what’s going on there?

mglessmer — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 10:30:20 +0000

After having talked about wakes quite a bit recently, I’m going to show you a couple more pics today (bit not as many as I did two days ago, sorry! ;-)) And today we are focussing on the wake of one specific ship, the Stena Germanica that we sailed on for a mini cruise to […]

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More wakes

mglessmer — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 10:48:14 +0000

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 deck we had an excellent view over the Kiel fjord and later the Port of Gothenburg…

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Wakes and what they do to the sun’s reflection

mglessmer — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 10:30:32 +0000

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 plenty more! :-) Today, I want to show you a couple that have one thing in common: the way that they show up against the […]

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Reflected wake

mglessmer — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 10:45:36 +0000

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 wake-watching. Look at the sailing ship below and its beautiful wake! You very clearly see the streak directly behind the boat, caused by turbulence where […]

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Wave hunt expedition. You don’t need to live close to the coast to observe all kinds of wave phenomena!

mglessmer — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 08:15:07 +0000

A 1.5 hour walk around a lake — and 242 photos of said lake — later I can tell you one thing: You definitely don’t need to live close to the coast in order to observe wave phenomena! The idea to go on a “wave hunt expedition” is actually not mine (although it definitely sounds […]

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Wave train

mglessmer — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 09:16:41 +0000

When you look at waves, do you sometimes notice the train of smaller waves being pushed forward by the “main” wave? That has always fascinated me. Kind of like in the center of this picture: When we were sailing in Ratzeburg earlier this year, one day there were hardly any wind waves on the lake, so putting a […]

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Standing waves in a tank

mglessmer — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 11:11:09 +0000

And really high order ones, too! On Monday, I showed you a movie on wave generation in Hamburg Ship Model Basin (HSVA)’s wave tank. At the end of that movie, we see that the wave energy is being dissipated by a “beach”. Well, we actually see that some of the energy is reflected in those cute little […]

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Let’s do the wave! Longitudinal or transversal?

mglessmer — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 04:02:16 +0000

A simple visualization of two types of waves. The FIFA world cup has been over for a while now, but I still need to share an idea I had watching one of the games when the audience got bored and started doing a wave around the stadion: this would be a great in-class demonstration of […]

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