When you look at a beach, the waves are always coming in the direction of the shore. On the other side of the shore, the waves are also coming in the direction of the land that’s opposite the one you’re on. Is there a middle ground in-between these wave directions where the waves are just flat and not going in either direction? Im from poland looking at the beach rn. Sweden is 170km away on the other side of the sea. the waves are coming in the direction of both shores. HOW? what happens in between the two shores, how do they just change directions. please help
In: Planetary Science
Out at sea waves can go in all directions. They are produced by the interaction of wind and water, so the wave direction is related to the wind direction. As waves move from deep water to shallower water, the speed and height of the wave changes, slowing down and getting taller. part of this slowing down, a process called refraction, changes the direction of a wave to be more directly onshore, so a wave traveling at an angle to the shore in deep water, as it enters shallower water, will turn to move more directly onto the shore.
Surface waves are caused by wind, and since wind usually blows from the sea towards the land, that’s the direction waves go. If you were to sail from Poland to Sweden, what you’d see is a while after leaving Poland, the waves would stop moving uniformly towards the land and would become a little more chaotic, doing whatever the wind happened to be doing. After a while longer you’d enter a zone where the prevailing winds are now moving towards Sweden, and the waves would be moving in that direction.
Lol.
Waves just appear to only come ashore, they couldn’t very well come from any other direction.
The answers here are good, as they say waves move everywhere. As to what happens to oceans with land on two sides, imagine it as a glass with water sloshing around (waves). As the water his the edges it will always look as if the water is coming perpendicular to the edge, you don’t have sideways sloshing (unless you do twisting movements that don’t occur naturally in the world). It’s not exactly the same phenomenon, but it might give you an idea of why waves can be hitting to opposite beaches with no problem.
Waves are energy moving through the water. When the wave energy hits an island that energy moves around the island like a whip. That is why no matter where you are on the island the waves always come to shore no matter the wind direction.
Imagine a car driving on a road with sand beside it. If the car hits the sand on one side those wheels will slow down. This will cause the car to steer towards the sand.
The same thing happens with waves. The shallower water near the shore slows the waves down and ‘bends’ the wave to shore.
Related driving tip: if you accidentally end up with one or two wheels offroad in real life, always slow down before steering back to the road. If you steer back without slowing down, the sudden increase in grip as the off-road wheel(s) het back on the road surface can cause you to overcorrect and steer into the opposite lane in the worst case scenario.
Waves are created by wind blowing on the water for large areas and periods of time. Waves can go out to see but you won’t see them because they will be very small and the water will be getting deeper so they will not stand up like you see at the shore. In Florida you get nor Easter storms that come through and and make big waves but after a strong west wind blows and knocks down 5 to 6 ft Waves in a matter of hours because of the wind blowing towards where the waves are coming from.
Wind disturbs water.
If the water is disturbed and raises slightly in its disturbance, it is more likely to catch the wind.
The more likely it is to catch the wind, the more it disturbs the water around it and then that disturbed water raises up higher.
The water cannot stay raised, it has too much weight/energy so it falls and pushes the water underneath it, pushing the next section of water up, which then falls pushing the next section etc. etc.
The further this wave travels, the more water it collects as it is more likely to catch the wind, and it will effectively keep traveling until something stops it, Land.
Most of the time, the wind is towards the shore anyway, this is because the land heats up faster, (Specific Heat Capacity Land vs Water if you wanna look that up) which helps this affect, and if a small wave crashes into a bigger one, then they result in a net movement towards the direction of the bigger waves travel.
This can be summed up as:
Although initially the wind disturbs waves randomly, the largest waves will be produced by the largest distance of travel before hitting land. This means waves broadly speaking get emitted from the center of oceans towards land.
Waves are created by wind blowing on the water for large areas and periods of time. Waves can go out to see but you won’t see them because they will be very small and the water will be getting deeper so they will not stand up like you see at the shore. In Florida you get nor Easter storms that come through and and make big waves but after a strong west wind blows and knocks down 5 to 6 ft Waves in a matter of hours because of the wind blowing towards where the waves are coming from.
Waves can go any direction.
Think about the shore – how would waves go away from shore? Where would the waves come from?
As for the rest, think about being in a pool, or the tub. What happens if you bounce up and down in the middle? Waves will form. They’ll radiate out from you toward every edge (shore). They’ll bounce back, and the waves in the middle will get a bit crazy. They’ll interact with each other. But no matter which way the waves go, they’re always headed towards shore because there’s an edge on every side.
So if you have a sea with land on both sides, what happens if you are on one shore and make a big wave going away from your side? Well now that’s a wave going towards the other shore. And once it hits shore, it will rebound and come back to your side. Anyone making waves on the other side is making them come towards you. It’s just a never ending cycle!
Test it out! Grab a container and fill it a bit with water. Watch closely and drop something in the water at one side. The ripple will go out from that side, but after it hits, the entire surface will have ripples or turbulence. Try it with bigger things, or push a wave with your hand.
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