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This Machine Produces the Largest Humanmade Waves In the World

Posted by Soulskill on 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.

11 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. humanmade? by DigiShaman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wouldn't that be man-made?

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
    1. Re:humanmade? by ColdWetDog · · 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 · · Score: 2

      I think "human-made" is a stupid replacement for "man-made", which itself is a stupid replacement for "artificial".

    3. Re:humanmade? by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

    4. Re:humanmade? by myrdos2 · · 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.

  2. Incorrect by Anonymous Coward · · 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 · · 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 · · 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. hu-person-made surely? by Roger+W+Moore · · 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 · · 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 Roger+W+Moore · · 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.