A New Method of Investigating Sea Waves

Abstract

THE common methods of investigation of a high sea permit the height and the length of waves to be measured, but do not give any means of determining the changes of form of the wave, which can sometimes differ considerably from the simple form of a trochoid. “Forced waves” especially undergo deformation inasmuch as their steepness has often to be left out of account. Precise stereo-photogram-metric methods are always complicated, cumbersome and slow, which reduces their applicability to large amounts of material, as in other regions of geophysics. In such cases, when comparisons of the steepness of waves have to be made with large masses (as in the comparison of ocean and smaller sea waves) in order to study the relations between it and the wind-velocity, etc., the following method can be used.