Math 312 - Applied Math handout # 4

How fast do waves move on the surface of water?

As they say, “it all depends...” I notice several types of water waves when I make my
neighborhood walk in the mornings, especially if it has rained recently. A breath of wind is enough
to raise ripples on the surface of puddles, and a solitary raindrop falling from an overhead branch is
sufficient to set up a fascinating set of concentric circles, propagating outward smoothly from their
center. Then there are longer wind-induced waves frequently visible on the surface of the inlets of
the Lafeyette river; rarely is it totally calm, and even then an occasional underwater dweller will
break the surface to catch a fly hovering near the surface (or possibly just to attract my attention).
Frequently a committee of ducks will launch themselves into the water as I approach them,
presumably unaware that I try to avoid committees at all costs. After the initial splashes have died
down, the ducks produce interacting wakes as they head away from me to more suitable gathering
place across the water. But I have news for them this morning: just as they heave themselves out of
the water again to continue their deliberations, a dog walking a man becomes very anxious to give
his two-bit(e)s worth to the preening, quacking group. He strains at the leash, and all of a sudden,
shoots like a bullet into the duckfest, scattering them like, yes, duckpins, back into the water. Never
have I seen a dog look so pleased with itself...and the committee meeting is postponed for yet
another time.

Before discussing the types of wave and wake patterns behind swimming ducks and in front of
stationary objects (such as protruding twigs stuck in the stream bed – see questions 71 and 72), we
need to discuss some general features of waves on the surface of water, or surface gravity waves.
These are waves propagating under the combined effects of gravity and surface tension. Frequently
one of these effects (or restoring forces) dominates the other, in which case the name is based on
which force is primarily responsible - gravity or surface tension. Because capillarity is a
phenomenon associated with surface tension (as when the adhesion forces between water and glass
cause water to rise up inside a thin glass tube), the latter waves are sometimes called capillarity or
capillary waves. Both types are readily observable in nature. For the combined effects of both forces,
the speed of an individual wave crest propagating in one dimension is
1/2
gλ 2πγ
c = λν = + tanh 2πh , (70.1)
2π λρ λ
where λ = wavelength, ν = wave frequency, ρ = fluid density; h and γ are the fluid (water!) depth
and coefficient of surface tension respectively. The gravitational acceleration has magnitude g. In
this formulation the speed c of an individual wave of wavelength λ is given by c = ω/k and the speed
c g of a group of waves is c g = dω/dk. In most books on waves, especially water waves, the equation
(70.1) is expressed in terms of the angular frequency ω = 2πv and wavenumber k = 2π/λ as
g γk 1/2
ω = ck = k + ρ tanh kh . (70.2)
k
It is worthwhile to consider some special cases of (70.1).

(i) Deep water waves

For our purposes, “deep” here means that the wavelength is small compared with the depth of the
water, i.e.
h ≫ 1,
λ
which means that

tanh 2πh ≈ 1.
λ
Under these circumstances
gλ 2πγ
c2 ≈ + , (70.3)
2π ρλ
which represents the (wave speed) 2 for disturbances which “feel” the effects of gravity and surface
tension, but do not “feel” the bottom of the channel, reservoir, etc. Furthermore, for “long” waves in
this category, i.e.
gλ 2πγ
≫
2π ρλ
it follows that
gλ
c2 ≈ . (70.4)
2π
Thus

c∝ λ. (70.5)
This is the correct relationship between velocity and wave-length for ocean waves, which are
completely dominated by gravity. Crudely – the longer the wavelength, the faster the wave moves.

(ii) Shallow water waves

At the other extreme, for “short” waves, i.e.
gλ 2πγ
≪ ,
2π ρλ
we find that
2πγ
c2 ≈ . (70.6)
ρλ
Thus
c ∝ λ −1/2 . (70.7)
These waves (ripples) are completely dominated by surface tension, and the shorter they are the
faster they move. Now let’s go to the other extreme, and examine shallow water waves. This means
that the depth of water is small compared with the wavelength, i.e.
h ≪ 1.
λ
Under these circumstances it may be shown from a Taylor series expansion about the origin, (i.e.
a Maclaurin series) that

tanh 2πh ≈ 2πh .

λ λ
These waves do “feel” the bottom. For most problems of interest in this wave situation, the
second term in (70.1) is negligible, so that the following result is valid for gravity waves in shallow
water:
c 2 ≈ gh. (70.8)
This is an important result: it means that the wave speed is independent of wavelength. This
implies that all the waves travel with the same speed, and any complex initial wave configuration
may retain an identifiable shape for quite some time afterwards. Actually, the strong inequalities
(“≪” and “≫”  we have employed to distinguish between deep water waves and their shallow water
counterparts do not need to be enforced so strictly; sometimes it is sufficient to demand that h < λ/2
for shallow water waves, for example. It all depends on the context.

Let us return to equation (70.3) for deep-water capillarity-gravity waves, for there is quite a bit
more information we can extract. In the extreme cases given by equations (70.5) and (70.7)
respectively we have seen that the square of the speed behaves in a (i) linear and (ii) a rectangular
hyperbolic fashion respectively, as functions of wavelength. In the intermediate region, i.e. where the
terms gλ/2π and 2πγ/ρλ are comparable, both restoring forces are comparable, and the respective
1/2
graphs of cλ must intersect. This is illustrated generically in Figure 70.1 as c ∼ λ + λ −1  :

2.5

1.5

0.5

0 1 2 3 4

Fig. 70.1: qualitative behavior of cλ based on eqn. (70.3)

The speed c is clearly a minimum since c ′′ λ > 0 at the critical wavelength λ c given by the
solution of
c ′ λ = 0,
which is
γ
λ c = 2π gρ . (70.9)

In cgs units, λ c ≈ 1. 72 cm for water. For wavelengths less than or greater than this, the dominant
restoring force tends to be respectively surface-tension or gravity. If we substitute (70.9) back into
(70.3) we find the corresponding minimum speed to be
 4gγ
c min = 4
ρ ≈ 23 cm/s = 0. 23 m/s. (70.10)

This means that any breeze or gust of wind with speed less than 0. 23 m/s will not generate any
propagating waves, other than a transient disturbance. Wind speeds above this minimum value will
in principle generate two sets of waves, with wavelengths on each side of λ c , i.e. one set with λ < λ c
(capillarity waves) and one set with λ > λ c (gravity waves). Note that these results may be derived
without the use of calculus: use of the arithmetic-geometric inequality gives the required result. This
inequality tells us, in particular, that if a > 0 and b > 0 then
a+b ≥ ab ,
2
with equality occurring if and only if a = b. This result, which tells us that the arithmetic mean is
never less than the geometric mean, is easily established by considering the inequality
2
a − b ≥ 0, and can be generalized to a set of n positive numbers, but we need only two here.
Then we can recover result (70.10) by writing equation (70.3) for brevity as
β
c 2 = αλ + , α > 0, β > 0. (70.11)
λ
Then it follows by the above inequality that the sum of these two terms is never less than
2 αβ = 2 gγ/ρ . Since the minimum of c 2 occurs when the minimum of c does, the corresponding
result stated above for c min is established. There is in principle no limit to the maximum speed of
water waves if their wavelength is small enough. It might be thought that a similar conclusion
applies to very long waves as well, but sooner or later the waves in this limit must be considered
shallow, and the maximum speed c is then just gh as we have seen above.

It is appropriate at this point to add a comment on wave refraction : we now have a simple model
explaining why ocean waves line up parallel to the beach, even if far out to sea they are approaching
it obliquely. Fix the wavelength of any particular wave you are interested in. Far out, the wave is in
deep water (λ ≪ h deep  and so c ∝ λ . Nearer in, the wave is in shallow water (λ ≫ h shallow  and so
c ∝ h shallow , which is of course smaller than λ. So that part of the wavefront nearest the beach
slows down compared to that further out, and the whole thing tends to “slew” around.