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

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

Re: Waves

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

That's what I recall as well. Of course, when the ocean gets really shallow (like at the beach), this interferes with some of the circular movement, so there's much more horizontal movement there, which surfers take advantage of.