RE: [Paddlewise] Re: Weird Shoals or Beating Dumpy

> I looked in one dictionary and did not find "clapotis". Another lists
> it as a French word meaning "wash".

According to Wikipedia:

Clapotis

>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In hydrodynamics, the clapotis (from French: "lapping of water") is a
non-breaking standing wave pattern, caused for example, by the reflection of
a traveling surface wave train from a near vertical shoreline like a
breakwater, seawall or steep cliff.[1][2][3][4] The resulting clapotic[5]
wave does not travel horizontally, but has a fixed pattern of nodes and
antinodes.[6] These waves promote erosion at the toe of the wall,[7] and can
cause severe damage to shore structures.[8] The term was coined in 1877 by
French mathematician and physicist Joseph Valentin Boussinesq who called
these waves 'le clapotis' meaning 'standing waves'.[9][10]

In the idealized case of "full clapotis" where a purely monotonic incoming
wave is completely reflected normal to a solid vertical wall,[11][12] the
standing wave height is twice the height of the incoming waves at a distance
of one half wavelength from the wall.[13] In this case, the circular orbits
of the water particles in the deep-water wave are converted to purely linear
motion, with vertical velocities at the antinodes, and horizontal velocities
at the nodes.[14] The standing waves alternately rise and fall in a mirror
image pattern, as kinetic energy is converted to potential energy, and vice
versa.

Steve Holtzman
 

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