When I watch waves come ashore, they are a set distance apart. What causes this pattern?
436755
When you see the waves coming at you on a beach, they really did not begin that way. Small disturbances far from where you are observing the waves accumulate and thus form a giant wave which you get to see. The waves are a set distance apart because when two waves interfere, there paths are not changed and the resultant wave is the addition of the two waves. So say there are two waves which meet and come at you, and then there are another 2 waves which meet at some distance d from the first two, and they come at you and the distance doesn't change between the two resultants because that's the property of a resultant wave. Similarly you see many such resultants coming at you with a set distance between them.
101571
If the waves strike the beach at right angles, then one gets "nearshore currents", or riptides, which are streams of fast moving water straight out into the ocean.\n\nIf the waves strike the beach at some other angle, then one gets "longshore currents".
303434
This Great Lake doesn't have tides like the ocean; however, periodically the water levels rise and fall by as much as one foot due to a phenomenon called a ‘seiche’ (SAYSH, a French word that means "to sway back and forth"). This happens when water piles up on one side of the lake because of wind or high barometric pressure and then shifts back to the other side. Small seiches occur all the time, but sometimes strong ones can cause ships to bang together in harbors, or leave them high and dry for a few minutes.
81492
On coasts with sloping shorelines, waves crash against the land, eroding some of the material it's made of. If you look carefully, you may see a notch cut into the shore by waves at the back of the beach. Removing the supporting rock or sediment weakens the material above it. Landslides tumble onto the beach, especially after a storm. See sources below
376885
The heat causes waves in the air that affect the passage of light becuase the density is different than the surrounding air.  Same happens if you look at the fron of an  air horn like at a football game. But it's the opposite, it's caused by extreme cold.
329954
Generally it is the action of wind on the surface of the water. wave in a small lake are proportionally smaller the waves in a large lake or bay. Waves in the ocean have a lot longer for the effect to gain momentum.
461903
It happens in the atmosphere too, but to a lesser degree.\n\nWater (even pure water) reflects, refracts, and absorbs light.  As light passes through a body of water, some of the light is reflected back, some of the light is refracted (bent), and some of the light is absorbed (leading to warming of the water).  The more water the light has to pass through, the more of the light that is reflected, refracted, or absorbed.  So the deeper you go, the less light will reach you.\n\nTo simplify, just consider absorbsion.  If a cloumn of water one metre deep absorbs 50% of the light that passes through it, then the light at the top of the column will be 100% and at the bottom only 50%.  Add another column of one metre under the first column and it will absorb 50% of the light that passes through it.  It has 50% of the total light available at the top, so only 25% remains at the bottom.\nAnd so on.
363353
It's probably the water causing refraction of the scope.  You'll see that at higher magnifications.  I think it's the same principle as a snowflake.
420013
Yes there are tides on the open ocean.  The change in tide can greatly effect the size and frequency of waves.  It can also make storm waves worse.
47570
The tide comes in and goes out due to gravity, the waves are attributed to wind, techtonic plate activity and weather cycles on the surface of the ocean.  A swell means wave action may be increasing on certain beaches depending on which way the beach faces, i.e. south facing beach.
241465
No. Wave dispersion separates frequencies. The Doppler effect is caused by motion towards or away from a source, altering the perceived frequency.
251505
When water falls, it becomes a mist. Then light refraction occurs and the wave length changes. It looks white because it scatters the light. I also creates rainbows because of the light refraction.
571847
Two traveling waves which exist in the same medium will interfere with each other. If their amplitudes add, the interference is said to be constructive interference, and destructive interference if they are "out of phase" and subtract. Patterns of destructive and constructive interference may lead to "dead spots" and "live spots" in auditorium acoustics.\n\nInterference of incident and reflected waves is essential to the production of resonant standing waves.\n\nInterference has far reaching consequences in sound because of the production of "beats" between two frequencies which interfere with each other. \n\nDiffraction: the bending of waves around small obstacles and the spreading out of waves beyond small openings.\n\nRefraction is the bending of waves when they enter a medium where their speed is different. Refraction is not so important a phenomena with sound as it is with light where it is responsible for image formation by lenses, the eye, cameras, etc. But bending of sound waves does occur and is an interesting phenomena in sound\n\nWhen a vehicle with a siren passes you, a noticeable drop in the pitch of the sound of the siren will be observed as the vehicle passes. This is an example of the Doppler effect. An approaching source moves closer during period of the sound wave so the effective wavelength is shortened, giving a higher pitch since the velocity of the wave is unchanged. Similarly the pitch of a receding sound source will be lowered.\n\nLight in the form of a plane wave in space is said to be linearly polarized. Light is a transverse electromagnetic wave, but natural light is generally unpolarized, all planes of propagation being equally probable. If light is composed of two plane waves of equal amplitude by differing in phase by 90°, then the light is said to be circularly polarized. If two plane waves of differing amplitude are related in phase by 90°, or if the relative phase is other than 90° then the light is said to be elliptically polarized.
843256
waves don't always come to shore, they go in most every direction, the reason you see them close to shore is the sloping land under the water makes it apper to get bigger and more pronouced, as it nears the shore. thus making it seem like they always come to the shore.
1061601
tides dont create waves storms and wind does. a strong wind over a long period creates waves and storms churning in the ocean for a period create swells. some spots break better on a low tide or a high tide depending on the bottom and swell direction. the huge waves that hit california last week were generated from a big storm way out in the ocean.  if your interested in knowing when is the best time to go boogie boarding go to surfline . this site has surf forcasts, storm watches, and live cams of most spots all around the world. you can log on and check out the surf from home and save yourself a trip to a lousy day at the beach. or... if your like me, keep an eye open on surfline and hit it when its on. know before you go...
159665
When swimming in the ocean, have you ever wondered why you tend to be carried down the beach, away from your towel in an undertow? \n\nThe answer is simple. This process is called longshore drift and is generated by wave and current action.
1071215
The seawater simply reflects the light ..at dawn iit is orangish as the sky is orangish at noon light blue and in the night it is deep blue \nthe reason why the sky turns orange in the morning and evening is explained by raielings law of scattering