Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Geology field notes - Process to product: ripples

One nice thing about beaches is that you can observe processes and the resulting products  at the same location.  The video clip and the picture were taken from a beach not far away from my home (ok, about an hour drive...).
In the short movie below, the wave action on the beach creates a water flow that entrains the sand and generates moving bed-forms (ripples) on the bed surface.

The resulting rippled bed surface looks like this.
Ripples on a beach                                 ©RomaniaRocks
If the process continues and net sediment accumulation takes place, the result is a ripple-laminated sand.
Enjoy your next walk on the beach and take your own pictures and video-clips of ripples in the making.

2 comments:

  1. Good idea! And it makes me want to go to the beach. Don't know when *that* will happen, though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Silver Fox, hope you get to the beach soon. I love beaches, especially when they also have the mountains nearby :) Asking too much?

    ReplyDelete

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