Universities’ experiment makes waves by recreating famous Japanese print
FOR nearly 200 years, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print, has inspired wonder, in part because the event it depicts, a towering freak wave, has defied scientific explanation.
Now, a team from Oxford and Edinburgh universities claims to have laid the mystery to rest by creating a wave that remarkably resembles the print.
The achievement is being hailed as a breakthrough because, so far, meteorologists and sailors have had no means of predicting the likelihood of violent waves that are unexpectedly large compared with their surroundings.
Indeed, the phenomenon was first scientifically measured only in 1995, when a freak wave hit the Draupner drilling platform in the North Sea.
Using an artificial wave-making pool at the University of Edinburgh’s Flowave Ocean Energy Research facility, the researchers created two wave groups, varying the angle at which they met. At roughly 120 degrees, freak waves occurred. Wave breaking patterns normally limit height, but when waves cross at large angles, breaking behaviour changes allowing greater heights, the researchers said.
“The measurement of the Draupner wave in 1995 was a seminal observation initiating many years of research into the physics of freak waves and shifting their standing from mere folklore to a credible real-world phenomenon,” said Dr Mark Mcallister, from Oxford.
The team said the wave it created bore a resemblance to the Hokusai print which depicts a wave towering over three boats with Mount Fuji in the background.