This Machine Produces the Largest Humanmade Waves In the World

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This Machine Produces the Largest Humanmade Waves In the World

Posted by Soulskill on Friday October 2, 2015 @06:38AM from the good-news-everyone dept.

sciencehabit writes: A new experimental facility at Deltares, a research institute in the Netherlands, has begun producing the largest humanmade waves in the world. Like kids building sandcastles below the tideline on the beach, scientists will let the walls of water crash on dikes of different designs and other structures—sometimes until they're destroyed. The Delta Flume, to be inaugurated on 5 October, is a 300-meter-long water-filled trough that is 9.5 meters high and 5 meters wide. At one end sits a gigantic metal plate called a wave board; four pistons move it back and forth to whip up the kind of waves that the sea can unleash.

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humanmade? by DigiShaman · 2015-10-02 06:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

Wouldn't that be man-made?

--
Life is not for the lazy.
1. Re:humanmade? by ColdWetDog · 2015-10-02 06:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Not in the politically correct portions of Northern Europe. Misogynist.
  But more to the point:
  
  The new Dutch flume replaces an older, smaller version that will be retired after 35 years of service
  Oh man, they should not retire the thing. They should commercialize the thing. You could make it into the ultimate water park.
  
  --
  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
2. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 06:45 · Score: 0
  
  You PC, Bro?!
3. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 06:52 · Score: 2
  
  I think "human-made" is a stupid replacement for "man-made", which itself is a stupid replacement for "artificial".
4. Re:humanmade? by dskoll · 2015-10-02 06:55 · Score: 1
  
  Re: Commercializing... Yes! Where I live, there is a wave pool that has one of those wave machines and it's lots of fun. Unfortunately, I don't think that a typical wave tank is designed with swimmers in mind, so it would probably be quite expensive to adapt it.
5. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 06:59 · Score: 1
  
  My thoughts exactly. This reminds me of the last round of this nonsense... "They are now called peopleholes" FFS this is far too much. Referring to something as being man made is clearly a shortened form of "human made" because human made sounds stupid and doesn't roll off the tongue. A man hole is a management hole. A manager manages people, shall we call that human-ager?
  Yet, we've done nothing to change the wage gap, and right now several different "developed nations" are still deciding what woman can and can't do with their bodies.
  But this is how we fix that? I'm living in bizarro world where anything, literally anything, that has the 3 letters M A N together, must be changed because it's clearly sexist. Adding more guns into the population lowers gun violence, pot is illegal in most places but deadly cancer causing drugs and other things aren't, and in fact are being marketed towards children.
  I'm about done with this nonsense. Well no, that's a lie... I'll be done when I have to refer to the Owners Manual as an Owners Humanual, which I suspect will be sometime next week.
6. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:05 · Score: 1
  
  Not in the lingually ignorant, politically correct portions of Northern Europe. Misogynist.
  Man is a species determination.
  Wo- is the female prefix.
  Were- is the male prefix.
  I will honor feminist word redefinitions only if we return to the classical meanings of those terms. I demand that I be referred to in all documentation that chooses to focus on gender as a 'wereman.'
7. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:14 · Score: 0
  
  ikr. lol. #KillAllMen
8. Re: humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:20 · Score: 0
  
  If were- is the prefix for male, is a female werewolf a wowolf?
9. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:21 · Score: 2
  
  An "artifice" is a forgery, a fake, or something used to trick other people. "Artificial" means that something is used as an artifice.
  This is a story about a very real machine, that really creates waves. It does not trick or deceive. It merely simulates. It is man-made, not artificial.
  But I agree that "human-made" is dumb.
10. Re:humanmade? by KGIII · 2015-10-02 07:32 · Score: 1
  
  I think the important question, and the most important question, is can I surf on one?
  Ha! Just kidding. I can't surf worth a damn. I have a scar to prove my ineptness.
  
  --
  "So long and thanks for all the fish."
11. Re: humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:43 · Score: 1
  
  It's used, though very rarely. Werewolfs were historically believed to all be male.
12. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  The etymology is: "made from skill". A classic case in the evolution of the language, of attributing a very negative connotation to a very positive/neutral word...
13. Re:humanmade? by PopeRatzo · 2015-10-02 08:23 · Score: 1
  
  Not in the politically correct portions of Northern Europe. Misogynist.
  Friday fun on Slashdot. The channers are bored with planning school shootings, I guess.
  
  --
  You are welcome on my lawn.
14. Re:humanmade? by ShanghaiBill · 2015-10-02 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  Not in the politically correct portions of Northern Europe.
  Not in Europe, or anywhere else. This device created far bigger human-made waves more than half a century ago.
15. Re:humanmade? by Your.Master · 2015-10-02 08:55 · Score: 1
  
  I don't believe for one second you looked up "artificial" in the dictionary. You might have looked up artifice and then jumped to conclusions on the basis of a common etymology.
  You don't have grounds to complain about human-made vs. man-made if you're introducing the same nonsensical distinction between artificial and man-made.
16. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 09:04 · Score: 0
  
  Hurry up I'm holding the door open for you, sweetheart.
17. Re:humanmade? by Your.Master · 2015-10-02 09:08 · Score: 1
  
  Look, keep using man-made, I'm not on a crusade, and I'll keep using man-made. But FFS, humanmade does roll off the tongue. Human rolls off the tongue, and man-made rolls off the tongue, and human-made doesn't introduce any special linguistic controtion by joining the two terms.
  
  But this is how we fix that? I'm living in bizarro world where anything, literally anything, that has the 3 letters M A N together, must be changed because it's clearly sexist
  Not to pick on you in particular, but you are an anonymous coward so you can represent the group. Do you not realize that YOU are the PC police when you jump on everybody's tiniest difference in language usage, even when it's completely correct and completely understandable, and you are the one bringing up these strawman language changes with manager and manual.
  I'm living in a bizarro world where anything, literally anything, that has the 5 letters "H U M A N", must be changed because it's clearly PC bullshit. Next Dehumanizes will become demanizes! Humane will become mane! Oh the manity!
18. Re:humanmade? by myrdos2 · 2015-10-02 09:18 · Score: 2
  
  They should commercialize the thing. You could make it into the ultimate water park.
  It's already been tried! In a little piece of heaven called Action Park Selected quotes from the Wikipedia:
  Nevertheless, the director of the emergency room at a nearby hospital said they treated from five to ten victims of park accidents on some of the busiest days, and the park eventually bought the township of Vernon extra ambulances to keep up with the volume.
  ...
  Water-based attractions made up half of the park's rides and accounted for the greatest share of its casualty count.
  ...
  The Tidal Wave Pool: The first patron death occurred here in 1982; another visitor drowned in this common water-park attraction five years later. It was, however, the number of people the lifeguards saved from a similar fate that made this the only Waterworld attraction to gain its own nickname, "The Grave Pool".[4] It was 100 feet (30 m) wide by 250 feet (76 m) long and could hold 500 to 1,000 people. Waves were generated for 20 minutes at a time with 10-minute intervals between them, and could reach as much as 40 inches (102 cm) in height.[4] It was not always obvious that pool depth increased as one got closer to the far end, and there were patrons who only remembered or realized that they could not swim when they were in over their heads and the waves were going full blast. Even those who could swim well did not realize that the waves, as fresh water, were not as buoyant as their ocean counterparts, and they sometimes exhausted themselves doing more swimming than they were ready for, causing patrons to crowd the side ladders as the waves began, leading to many accidents.[4] Twelve lifeguards were on duty at all times, and on high-traffic weekends they were known to rescue as many as 30 people, compared to the one or two the average lifeguard might make in a typical season at a pool or lake.
19. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 09:47 · Score: 0
  
  What "wage gap" would that be? Care to elaborate? Or just working hard to spread more Jewish nation-wrecking propaganda?
20. Re:humanmade? by tomhath · 2015-10-02 09:59 · Score: 1
  
  Oh man, they should not retire the thing.
  
  Why didn't you say "Oh person, they should not retire the thing"? It doesn't sound any more awkward than "Humanmade".
21. Re: humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 14:15 · Score: 0
  
  But "hu-man" also has male gender hiding inside. How about "hu-person"? No, still have the male gender in there. Ok, then, "hu-per-child". Or, in this context, huperchildkind.
22. Re:humanmade? by Pseudonym · 2015-10-02 16:42 · Score: 1
  
  No, they meant "kunstmatige". "Artificial" is a more accurate translation than "humanmade" or "manmade".
  
  --
  sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
23. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 16:49 · Score: 0
  
  Agreed. They should say "man-or-woman-made" instead. Much less ambigotous.
Ugh by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 06:40 · Score: 0

"a research institute in the Nethelands"
Really, editors? 'Nethelands' ?
no surprise by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 06:42 · Score: 0

wmd on credit wizards & warloks using our energy resources against us.... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+weather+waves
Incorrect by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 06:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

Incorrect the largest waves were made by humans when the detonated an H-Bomb.
Your measly wave pool is tiny compared to real power.
1. Re:Incorrect by harshath.jr · 2015-10-02 07:00 · Score: 2
  
  Incorrect the largest waves were made by humans when the detonated an H-Bomb.
  Your measly wave pool is tiny compared to real power.
  The goal is to produce tsunamis without the nuclear fallout.
2. Re:Incorrect by GungaDan · 2015-10-02 07:08 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Simple solution - just detonate the bomb underwater. All the nuclear nastiness will be cleared up by the water above it, just like smoking through a bong, right?
  
  --
  Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
3. Re:Incorrect by PPH · 2015-10-02 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  Umm, no. Pure water does not suffer from the creation of dangerous isotopes due to neutron activation. However, water as found lying on the surface of this planet contains many minerals, particularly salt. And the isotopes produced can be quite nasty.
  
  --
  Have gnu, will travel.
4. Re:Incorrect by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:20 · Score: 0
  
  The shock waves would probably kill everything underwater for a 200 mile radius. Just get K Kardashian to dive into the water, she has more junk in the trunk than a honda, you can see her ass from outer space (stolen lyrics from "do the jane fonda")
5. Re:Incorrect by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:23 · Score: 0
  
  Simple solution - just detonate the bomb underwater. All the nuclear nastiness will be cleared up by the water above it, just like smoking through a bong, right?
  Are you smoking through a bong now?
6. Re:Incorrect by rubycodez · 2015-10-02 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  deuterium to tritium would be an activation with dangerous isotope produced
7. Re:Incorrect by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 08:25 · Score: 0
  
  The largest waves (over 3.6 kilometers long) were made by humans, for communication:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
8. Re:Incorrect by luis_a_espinal · 2015-10-02 08:49 · Score: 1
  
  Incorrect the largest waves were made by humans when the detonated an H-Bomb.
  Your measly wave pool is tiny compared to real power.
  The goal is to produce tsunamis without the nuclear fallout.
  You can with enough TNT.
9. Re:Incorrect by tomhath · 2015-10-02 10:07 · Score: 1
  
  The US did that once, bomb was about 70 feet underwater, which is nothing for a nuke. It created so much fallout they never did it again.
10. Re:Incorrect by Deadstick · 2015-10-02 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  If you want to get silly with different transmission media, economic transactions can show traveling disturbances with wavelengths from New York to Hong Kong.
11. Re:Incorrect by Irate+Engineer · 2015-10-02 11:21 · Score: 1
  
  Simple solution - just detonate the bomb underwater. All the nuclear nastiness will be cleared up by the water above it, just like smoking through a bong, right?
  Dude, what kind of bong do you have, and what are you smoking with it?
  This sounds like the plot of a Cheech and Chong movie.
  
  --
  Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
  Vote for Bernie in 2016!
12. Re:Incorrect by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 15:32 · Score: 0
  
  Compared to real power, no... real stupidity, ignorance and arrogance, yes. There is nothing powerful about this unnatural rapid-death principle; there is something suicidal about it, however.
Here's how it's done by bigwheel · 2015-10-02 06:59 · Score: 1

by Calvin and Hobbes http://www.gocomics.com/calvin...
hu-person-made surely? by Roger+W+Moore · 2015-10-02 07:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Not in the politically correct portions of Northern Europe.
Which is ironic since the use of 'man' to mean 'person' in English comes from German where 'man' means 'one' and 'Mann' means man. So man-made actually means 'person-made' not made by a male. So instead of making the language clunky perhaps we should just educate people as to what it really means otherwise next we'll end up having to use 'huperson' instead of 'human'.
1. Re:hu-person-made surely? by ArmoredDragon · 2015-10-02 08:01 · Score: 2
  
  No, that's not it. The English language (and just about every other language) assumes the default person to be male unless otherwise specified. Though English is rather light on that assumption as we actually have a common pronoun for gender neutral (namely, it) which a lot of other languages lack (and they refer to objects as our equivalent of him or her.) That, and some languages like Spanish if you have a big stadium of a thousand women you refer to them as ellas (them, fem) but if you add just one man to the group of a thousand women, then they become ellos (them, masc.)
  And for what it's worth, for all of the complaints given about the US, the US is perhaps one of the least male-dominated societies out there. Or at least, most women I meet from other countries always talk about how where they're from the men always get to set rules for any women around.
2. Re:hu-person-made surely? by Nehmo · 2015-10-02 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  Not in the politically correct portions of Northern Europe.
  Which is ironic since the use of 'man' to mean 'person' in English comes from German where 'man' means 'one' and 'Mann' means man. So man-made actually means 'person-made' not made by a male. So instead of making the language clunky perhaps we should just educate people as to what it really means otherwise next we'll end up having to use 'huperson' instead of 'human'.
  Yeah, but we all know those Dutch Delta Flume guys probably only had one or two chicks on the team (and they got hired 'cus they were cute).
  It's impossible to "educate" away connotations of words by explaining esoteric etymologies. Modern English is stuck with man = male. AUE on the subject.
  The linked-to article used "artificial." Submitter should have just followed.
  
  --
  (||) Nehmo (||)
3. Re:hu-person-made surely? by idji · 2015-10-02 09:10 · Score: 1
  
  man(manMann) is just like sound/sound (Gesund/Geräusch) or ear (Ohr/Ähre). You won't educate anyone. words change meaning over time, noone can halt it. And unfortunately taboos change languages too throwing good words out of the language coney/puss/beaver were are ruined by the same taboo. It won't end - thes taboos will destroy more and more words from the language......
4. Re:hu-person-made surely? by TWX · 2015-10-02 09:11 · Score: 1
  
  Are you sure about that?
  
  I was under the impression that the English language, lacking a neuter, uses the masculine when the gender is unknown. The distinction is that the listener may interpret this to be an assumption of actually being male, but that would be his mistake, not that of the speaker.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
5. Re:hu-person-made surely? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2015-10-02 09:58 · Score: 1
  
  I am a hu-person you insensitive clod!
  
  --
  sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
6. Re:hu-person-made surely? by Roger+W+Moore · 2015-10-02 11:59 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  No, that's not it.
  Sorry but you are wrong. In old english 'man' meant person without any gender specification because 'wer' meant male human where is where "werewolf" comes from: literally "male person-wolf". However because we started to use the word 'man' to mean male human this interpretation has now been retroactively applied to words which were derived when the meaning was gender neutral.
  
  And for what it's worth, for all of the complaints given about the US, the US is perhaps one of the least male-dominated societies out there.
  Seriously? So how many female government leaders have you had? Your congress has under 20% women compared to ~25% for Canada, UK and Australia and 30% for New Zealand. Even Saudia Arabia has a 1% higher proportion of women in its national parliament than the US. In many European countries the ratio is in the upper thirties to forty percent.
7. Re:hu-person-made surely? by ArmoredDragon · 2015-10-02 12:21 · Score: 1
  
  Are you sure about that?
  I was under the impression that the English language, lacking a neuter, uses the masculine when the gender is unknown. The distinction is that the listener may interpret this to be an assumption of actually being male, but that would be his mistake, not that of the speaker.
  Well you could always refer to classic literature, which is generally considered authoritative proper use of language. It's practically unseen. In recent times however, most people have used "their" instead of "his", "her", or "his or her" but their is plural, and thus is not correct usage for one person. Also, I don't know about you, but I've found it kind of jarring when people use "her" when the gender is unspecified, and I don't think I'm alone in that.
8. Re:hu-person-made surely? by TWX · 2015-10-02 16:34 · Score: 1
  
  I tend to use the masculine or, "one," as a pronoun when the gender is either unknown or where the gender is as-yet undefined, like in future conditional tenses. I attempt to avoid using plurals for unknown singulars and yes, I find it rather jarring when the feminine is used when the gender is unknown. Excepted are cases when the gender is most likely feminine given the subject.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
9. Re:hu-person-made surely? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 22:53 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, the gender-neutral thing has been a pretty heated discussion over the years.
  Most people tend to prefer to use "they" for referring to unknown sex and genders. "It", for most people, sounds insulting for some reason.
  I would be fine having that be made official. It works well. Of course, there are even crybabies that get offended over "they" being used.
  Crybabies that ASSUME everyone is able to read their mind and automatically know they are a biquandary gender hypercube toaster-kun or some stupid thing like that.
  Just as long as we don't even remotely consider those stupid pronouns that people on Tumblr and the like have made up over the years.
  Holy hell that's a mess. There are at least 40% of the damn terms that are exactly the same, but special snowflakes want to be special so write it differently.
  Less than 10% of those non-standard genders might have some merit behind them, the rest are just speciallisnowflakisitis.
10. Re:hu-person-made surely? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 23:31 · Score: 0
  
  "...otherwise next we'll end up having to use 'huperson' instead of 'human'."
  Huperoffspring.
  FTFY
11. Re:hu-person-made surely? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-03 00:34 · Score: 0
  
  What are you on about? Don't be so ridiculous. "man-made" means person-made. This is just so much PC bollocks. It's like the feminist professor who changed the name of her "seminar" to "ovular" because "semin" sounds too much like "semen". What is wrong with these people? Fucking morons.
12. Re:hu-person-made surely? by Jack+Griffin · 2015-10-07 15:34 · Score: 1
  
  And for what it's worth, for all of the complaints given about the US, the US is perhaps one of the least male-dominated societies out there.
  Yeah, when the set of "societies out there" only includes countries using the Imperial system.
  For majority of the developed world, who've already had female heads of state, your claim is laughable.
We may need a non-car analogy... by bob_super · 2015-10-02 07:19 · Score: 0

So the Netherlands, country which is build behind walls to repel unwanted waves, has built the biggest domestic wave generator to help improve the walls?
Well, that solves the US election puzzle... We just need a domestic illegal immigrant generator!
1. Re:We may need a non-car analogy... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 07:47 · Score: 1
  
  We do, it's called Mexico.
What are the highest waves it can produce by Ashenkase · 2015-10-02 07:34 · Score: 1

The article said a lot of things but didn't say how high the waves get. There is no easy way for me to discern scale in that video either.
1. Re:What are the highest waves it can produce by silentquasar · 2015-10-02 08:24 · Score: 1
  
  From TFA:
  "...the maximum significant wave height—a measure of a storm's intensity—is 2.2 meters, but individual waves may top out at 4.5 meters."
2. Re:What are the highest waves it can produce by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 08:24 · Score: 0
  
  Look at the concrete walls in the trough of the waves, you could see they peaked at about 1, maybe 1.5 metres... That's also scaling it to the humans in the background.
3. Re:What are the highest waves it can produce by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 08:56 · Score: 0
  
  "the maximum significant wave height—a measure of a storm's intensity—is 2.2 meters, but individual waves may top out at 4.5 meters. "
WTF is 'humanmade'? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 09:43 · Score: 0

LOL. How many women designed and built this thing? Are you sick of 'Climatedot' and it's Jewish totalitarian propaganda yet?
Holy Michael Crichton, Batman! by theodp · 2015-10-02 11:25 · Score: 1

State of Fear (2004) excerpt:
Jonathan Marshall was twenty-four, a graduate student in physics from London, working for the summer at the ultra-modern Laboratoire Ondulatoire-the wave mechanics laboratory-of the French Marine Institute in Vissy, just north of Paris. But the suburb was mostly the residence of young families, and it had been a lonely summer for Marshall. Which was why he could not believe his good fortune at meeting this girl. This extraordinarily beautiful and sexy girl.
"Show me what it does, this machine," Marisa said. Her eyes were shining. "Show me what it is you do."
"My pleasure," Marshall said. He moved to the large control panel and began to switch on the pumps and sensors. The thirty panels of the wave machine at the far end of the tank clicked, one after another.
Nope by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-02 13:09 · Score: 0

Ok, now post a vid of wave made after a nice little underwater nuclear bomb detonation.
Make up your mind.... by Glasswire · 2015-10-02 13:57 · Score: 1

Are they made by humans or made by machines?
Simulation... by mutherhacker · 2015-10-02 20:06 · Score: 1

Have they never heard of simulation?...