Tall water waves behave unexpectedly
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - 14:00
in Physics & Chemistry
(PhysOrg.com) -- In investigating the behavior of large-amplitude standing water waves, mathematician Jon Wilkening of the University of California, Berkeley, has discovered that the waves behavior cannot be explained as simply as previously proposed. Questions regarding the dynamics of standing water waves have gone unanswered for decades since numerical simulations have not been powerful enough to explore wave behavior with sufficient accuracy. In the new study published in Physical Review Letters, Wilkening has used numerical simulations with a sufficiently high resolution (capable of achieving 26 digits of accuracy) to help better understand the dynamics that occur at the crests of standing water waves.