The Book of Waves, originally published by Arpel Graphics and Surfer Publications, is currently out of print.  Surf the Web for 1st editions, as well as 2nd and 3rd edition copies published by Roberts Rinehart.

An excerpt from

The Book of Waves

by Drew Kampion

We are surrounded and influenced everywhere by waves. From the radiations of light and color, to the sounds that vibrate through our atmosphere, to the cycles of the tides, and of night and day, and of the movements of our lives - it seems that everything comes in waves, or as cycles moving within waves.

Clearly, wave action is the fundamental way in which energy is transported and transmitted in this world. Waves are an expression of the universal rhythm that orchestrates and propels all creation and the development of life on earth. Perhaps this is why the contemplation and study of ocean waves is so attractive, so compelling.

Ocean waves are among the earth's most complicated natural phenomena, yet when we picture waves in the abstract, our minds might conjure an image of the perfect concentric ripples that echo the point of entry of a pebble into smooth pond waters. Those waves - the ideal waves of our conceptual imagination - are elongated sinusoidal oscillations, and although they do exist in relatively pure form in controlled conditions, they are not likely to be found in the more complex ocean environment. This is why waves are usually studied in laboratory tanks, where a single train of waves can be generated and where the mechanics of wave motion can be isolated and simplified.

Ocean waves and laboratory waves share the same basic features: a crest (the highest point of the wave), a trough (the lowest point), a height (the vertical distance from the trough to the crest), a wave length (the horizontal distance between two wave crests, and a period (the time it takes for a wave crest to travel one wave length).

Standing on a pier or jetty, or sitting astride a surfboard, the swift approach of an ocean wave gives the impression of a wall of water moving in your direction. In actuality, although the wave is moving toward you, the water is not. If the water were moving with the wave, the ocean and everything on it would be racing into the shore with catastrophic results. Instead, the wave moves through the water, leaving the water about where it was.

Spread a blanket on the floor. Kneel at one end and take the edge of the blanket in your hands, then slowly snap waves down its length. The blanket doesn't move, the waves ripple through it. The energy crosses the blanket in an oscillating wave pattern, diminishing (or decaying) as it moves toward the opposite end.

An ocean wave passing through deep water causes a particle on the surface to move in a roughly circular orbit, drawing the particle first toward the advancing wave, then up into the wave, then forward with it, then - as the wave leaves the particle behind - back to its starting point.

Because the speed is greater at the top of the orbit than at the bottom, the particle is not returned exactly to its original position after the passing of a wave, but has moved slightly in the direction of the wave motion. The radius of this circular orbit decreases with depth. In shallower water the orbits become increasingly elliptical until, in very shallow water - at a beach - the vertical motion disappears almost completely.

Its final destruction in shallow water culminates the three phases in the life of a wave. From birth to maturity to death, a wave is subject to the same laws as any other "living" thing, and - like other living things - each wave assumes for a time a miraculous individuality that, in the end, is reabsorbed into the great ocean of life.

© Drew Kampion, 2006