Surf Physics Fisica（冲浪物理运动）.pdfVIP

Surf Physics Ronald Edge urfboard riding has an aura of “endless sum- mer” about it — bronzed bodies with arms out- stretched, balancing on a small board and rid- S ing the front of a large wave as it advances toward the shore. It was characterized as a “royal sport for the nat- ural kings of earth” by Jack London, who described a Waikiki Beach surfer “rising like a sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white.”1 The first Westerner to comment on such a captivat- ing scene was Captain James Cook, who in 1777 de- scribed a canoe surfer in Tahiti: He went out from shore till he was near the place where the swell begins to take its rise; and, watching its first motion very attentive- ly, paddled before it with great quickness, till Fig. 1. Circular motion of water particles in deep-water he found that it overlooked him, and had ac- wave. quired sufficient force to carry his canoe before it without passing underneath it. He sat mo- Just what is happening when a surfer taps into the tionless and was carried along at the same energy of a breaking wave and rides to shore? It’s swift rate as the wave, till it landed him upon sport, it’s art, it’s skill, stamina, and drama. It is also the beach.2 physics — hydrodynamics, wave propagation, kine- matics, and dynamics. A year later Cook arrived on the big island of Hawaii and there witnessed the first board surfers and record- Gravity Driven Waves on Wat