waves

[nibot]

One of the things I was taught in elementary school that has long bothered me is that "in [ocean] waves, the water isn't moving, it's just the effect that's moving." Watching the surfers outside my window (ha!), I can't help but remember this. Of course the spirit of the statement is correct, but the problem is that water is not a particularly compressable fluid, so conservation of mass says that water has to be moving. eh?

Comments

[nibot.livejournal.com]

http://www.mathcad.com/Library/LibraryContent/MathML/water_waves.htm

specifically refers to "[surface waves on] an incompressible fluid in a constant gravitational field"

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

well, the water's moving up and down, surely enough. just not traveling into shore so much... right?

[yonked.livejournal.com]

I think it's best to say that: in a wave through a rope the rope moves, and in a wave through the water the water moves. However the scale on which the rope-bits and water-bits move is << one wavelength.

Waves

[jqmold.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that an individual particle of water in an ocean wave moves in a circular path - until the wave gets into shallow water. I'll look it up and recomment. R2