A Wave’s ‘Sweet Spot’ Revealed
For surfers, finding the “sweet spot,” the most powerful part of the wave, is part of the thrill and the challenge. Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California postdoctoral researcher Nick Pizzo has found the exact location on the wave where a surfer gains the greatest speed to get the best ride. Published this month online in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Pizzo applied principles of physics at the ocean’s surface—where air and water meet—to study how energy is transferred from the underlying wave to a particle on the surface, in this case, a surfer. “Based upon the speed and geometry of the wave, you can determine the conditions to surf a wave and also where on the wave the maximum acceleration, or ‘sweet spot,’ will be located,” said Pizzo, the author of the new paper and an avid surfer. Pizzo and fellow researchers in the Air-Sea Interaction Laboratory at the Scripps...