Machine produces the largest human-made waves in the world

Machine produces the largest human-made waves in the world(news.sciencemag.org)

41 points by jellekralt 10 years ago | 13 comments

mirimir 10 years ago |

If you're in Amsterdam, and have a little free time, I highly recommend the Normaal Amsterdams Peil visitor center in the City Hall.[0] There are large sight gauges, showing the water level at various points in the canal system. It gives a great sense of how far below the North Sea surface you may be.

[0] http://www.normaalamsterdamspeil.nl/en/

protomyth 10 years ago | |

That's nice. Devils Lake ND went with a little blue wave sign attached to the street lights to tell you how high the lake level is. It does make a person very mindful of what happens if the dike breaks.

markbnj 10 years ago |

You can see that the reflected waves have a big impact on the shape of the incoming waves as soon as the first of them reach the far end. I'm no hydrologist but it seems to me that the shape of the trough concentrates this effect in a way that would not happen in a more natural open environment like a shore or dike. I suppose they can account for this in their experiments. Very cool machine in any case. I love large-scale experimentation like this.

tlarkworthy 10 years ago |

We have a wave generator at my old university, nothing to that scale, but it it had an array of paddles on one edge of a cube, and you could generate different shapes of wave. Like a CNC wave generator. You could even generate a swirling vortex. It was a pretty cool thing. We tested robots and offshore energy harvestors.

http://osl.eps.hw.ac.uk/virtualPages/experimentalCapabilitie...

lmilcin 10 years ago |

Not largest human-made waves by any definition of largest or human-made.

mrob 10 years ago | |

Largest I can think of are waves produced by underwater nuclear tests. Wikipedia claims the Operation Crossroads test produced 29m high waves, and that was only 23kt yield.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads#Sequence_...

Retric 10 years ago | | |

Those are not active right now. It's the difference between oldest living person, and longest a person has ever lived.

deelowe 10 years ago | |

yeah. I dont understand what they are basing this on. Largest for testing purposes maybe? There are certainly larger wave machines (thrill rides, wave pools, etc..).

binarymax 10 years ago |

Here is a good video that shows how the (older) delta flume was used in the application of developing "living shorelines", as noted at the bottom of the article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDwoq71bCPw

samstave 10 years ago | |

That is super cool. I would love to know though how long the willow branch mattress would last though before vegetation growing on it would also help it rot, get water logged and sink.

Would one also want to include the drum based floats underneath to help keep it above water?

It would be interesting to see these made and just placed out in various areas to grow, like little artificial islands or marsh patches. It would also be a boon to the willow stick industry :-) (any idea why they picked willow branches aside from the fact that the willow just grows a boat-load of vine-y sticks?) (pun intended)

Arnt 10 years ago |

MACHINE produces the largest HUMAN-made... wait, what?

glaberficken 10 years ago | |

Human made machine produces largest machine made waves ever? Is that ok for you =)

Grustaf 10 years ago |

And not a single surfer showed up!