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Breaking swell waves at Hermosa Beach, California. A swell, also sometimes referred to as ground swell, in the context of an ocean, sea or lake, is a series of mechanical waves that propagate along the interface between water and air under the predominating influence of gravity, and thus are often referred to as surface gravity waves.
Fetch length, along with the wind speed (wind strength), and duration, determines the size of waves produced. If the wind direction is constant, the longer the fetch and the greater the wind speed, the more wind energy is transferred to the water surface and the larger the resulting sea state will be. [ 4 ]
If the wave is a sound wave and the sound source is moving faster than the speed of sound, the resulting shock wave creates a sonic boom. Lord Rayleigh predicted the following effect in his classic book on sound: if the observer were moving from the (stationary) source at twice the speed of sound, a musical piece previously emitted by that ...
Wave speed is a wave property, which may refer to absolute value of: phase velocity , the velocity at which a wave phase propagates at a certain frequency group velocity , the propagation velocity for the envelope of wave groups and often of wave energy, different from the phase velocity for dispersive waves
The dispersion relationship depends on the medium through which the waves propagate and on the type of waves (for instance electromagnetic, sound or water waves). The speed at which a resultant wave packet from a narrow range of frequencies will travel is called the group velocity and is determined from the gradient of the dispersion relation: =
Surface waves can travel around the globe many times from the largest earthquakes. Surface waves are caused when P waves and S waves come to the surface. Examples are the waves at the surface of water and air (ocean surface waves). Another example is internal waves, which can be transmitted along the interface of two water masses of different ...
An acoustic wave is a mechanical wave that transmits energy through the movements of atoms and molecules. Acoustic waves transmit through fluids in a longitudinal manner (movement of particles are parallel to the direction of propagation of the wave); in contrast to electromagnetic waves that transmit in transverse manner (movement of particles at a right angle to the direction of propagation ...
The relevant wave speed in the discussion above is the phase velocity of the wave. This is typically close to the group velocity which can be seen as the truer speed of a wave, but when they differ it is important to use the phase velocity in all calculations relating to refraction.