Medicine: Wave Lengths

When friends tell you tall stories of their rough sea passage—how mountainous, star-blotting waves towered “50, 60, 100 feet above our trembling ship,” refer them to an article that appeared last week in the Social Politischer Dienst (Berlin). Accurate determination with a special cinema camera had, it was stated, shown that ocean waves in a light breeze were from 2 to 4 yards high (i.e:, above sea level). In a “high sea,” waves might rise to 9 yards ; in a “violent gale,” to 10 or 12 yards.

From crest to crest the “longest” wave was set at 300 yards. (Let golfers picture a drive and a pitch; tennis players, 12 courts laid end-to-end; city-dwellers, 3 1/2 blocks). The time it took one wave to replace another was approximated at 20 seconds. “Longest” waves thus travel 15 yards per second, 40 miles per hour.