I’m going to walk you through the necessary equipment and knowledge for both casual shooters and the photography pros. Next time we are at the beach, let’s just take a moment to observe the waves.Before you set foot on a rocky shore, you need to understand the kind of gear required for ocean photography. Then we could estimate on how many days it rains for how long and with how many rain drops, and how many birds are in the area for how long, and how many ships pass the beach, and how many people come for a bath, and add all that to the number above.īut I think we should do something different. For example: Windy days like in the first picture are more likely in winter than in summer (although they can happen then, too), so let’s assume that they happen on one in four days => on average 21.600 of such waves per day. Now we have looked at different ways wave can form, and we could estimate how often each of those happens, and sum it all up. And can you think of other things that might make more waves? So how many waves hit the beach every day? There can be A LOT of splashing then, meaning LOTS of extra waves (this picture is from Bergen because I did not have one from Bjärred showing people jumping in the water and splashing me quite like this).Īnd then there are of course ships that make a lot of waves. waves!)Īnd then there are lot of animals living in or on or by the sea, many of which make waves. (And, in fact, each raindrop typically makes more than one wave, see picture (taken in Bergen, not Bjärred) below: when a raindrop hits the water, it bounces up like on a trampoline and makes three or more rings, i.e. On rainy days, each raindrop will make waves, and many of them will hit the beach! Or days like below: hardly any wind at all, and the wind coming from the land, so almost no waves at the beach, only waves further out (which you can see because close to the beach the water is smooth and shiny, and further out it looks more wrinkled and rougher).īut it’s not just the wind we need to consider. Wind blowing from the land towards the water means fewer waves at the beach than offshore What about days that look like on picture below? Lots and lots of tiny waves on the water, but many of them might lose all energy and disappear before they ever make it to the beach. The pictures I showed you so far are from windy days. Do we want to count all of them as individual waves? Look at the picture below: not all wave crests are as long as the beach, sometimes many small waves reach the beach at the same time but in different spots. How large do waves have to be to count as “waves”? If we want to count them all, there are probably thousands of them on each of the larger waves.Īnd it is even more complicated than that if we want to look at the whole length of the beach and not just one spot. If you look closely at the picture above or below, you might notice that on each of these long waves, there are TONS of smaller waves. These waves hit the beach every couple of seconds, and if we assume one wave every second (v=sqrt(g*H)=3m/s, so that’s an ok assumption), it would be 86.400 waves hitting the beach that day.īUT! It’s more complicated than that. These waves become most easily visible when they run up on sand banks in the water, then you can clearly distinguish the (breaking) crests and the troughs in between. On windy days with the wind coming across Öresund, there are a lot of big waves with 2 or 3m distance between their highest points (“wave crests”) and a trough in between. This is långa bryggan in Bjärred (for orientation: you might be able to spot the Malmö turning torso and/or the Öresund bridge on the horizon in most pictures). Since I know you live in Malmö, I will show you some pictures from close to home. And then I’ll try to put both together (short answer: I can’t give you a number, but it’s a lot of fun to think about!) Waves form mostly because wind is blowing on the sea. I’m thinking about both why there are waves at all, and about what I want to count as “waves”. That’s a great question, Sophia! And one that is really difficult to answer.
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