[00:00.49]Waves are the children of the struggle between ocean and atmosphere, the ongoing signatures of infinity.
[00:08.93]Rays from the sun excite and energize the atmosphere of the earth, awakening it to flow, to movement, to rhythm, to life.
[00:18.99]The wind then speaks the message of the sun to the sea and the sea transmits it on through waves -- an ancient, exquisite, powerful message.
[00:30.13]These ocean waves are among the earth's most complicated natural phenomena.
[00:35.41]The basic features include a crest (the highest point of the wave),
[00:40.50]a trough (the lowest point), a height (the vertical distance from the trough to the crest),
[00:47.93]a wave length (the horizontal distance between two wave crests),
[00:53.40]and a period (which is the time it takes a wave crest to travel one wave length).
[00:59.23]Although an ocean wave gives the impression of a wall of water moving in your direction,
[01:05.30]in actuality waves move through the water leaving the water about where it was.
[01:11.41]If the water was moving with the wave, the ocean and everything on it would be racing in to the shore with obviously catastrophic results.
[01:21.24]An ocean wave passing through deep water causes a particle on the surface to move in a roughly circular orbit, drawing the particle first towards the advancing wave,
[01:33.64]then up into the wave, then forward with it and then -- as the wave leaves the particles behind -- back to its starting point again.
[01:42.94]From both maturity to death, a wave is subject to the same laws as any other 'living' thing.
[01:50.37]For a time it assumes a miraculous individuality that, in the end, is reabsorbed into the great ocean of life.
[01:59.23]The undulating waves of the open sea are generated by three natural causes: wind, earth movements or tremors, and the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun.
[02:13.07]Once waves have been generated, gravity is the force that drives them in a continual attempt to restore the ocean surface to a flat plain.
