physics

Initially I thought I was looking at waves diffracting into Biscan Cove, but it looks like it’s actually reflection. The ocean waves (solid black wavefronts on the top left of the picture) follow the red arrow in and impact on the headland that juts out into the mouth of the Cove. There are big crashes here as those waves impact on the edge of that headland. The second, curved wavefronts (red) appear to originate from that headland when we trace perpendicular lines (accounting for my perspective, bear in mind this is some MS Paint level physics and art) back from them. The ocean waves impacting on the headland are being reflected out from it, or at the very least, the crashing of the waves is creating new wavefronts that originate from that point as if it’s a point source of waves. Pretty cool. Will be showing my students.

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