Wave pattern question

[TollyWally]

Ivor,
I will try patience and refreshinging the screen. Thanks for looking into the problem. I guess computers are a good example of sufficiently advanced technology looking like magic Once again my compliments on a fascinating site. Although operating on the kindergarten level I find hull dynamics very interesting and am always on the lookout to add to my knowledge base. The more I learn, the more there is to learn!

[marshmat]

On the issue of what happens to an individual water molecule in a wave:

At the scale of a single water molecule, classical mechanics ceases to have much, if any, relevance. But this scale is also a bit too large for quantum mechanics to yield easy solutions. If you're interested in the behaviour of individual molecules, it's time to pull out a statistical mechanics textbook and brace yourself for some scary assumptions and approximations. Thankfully, when dealing with boats, we can usually treat the water using conventional fluid mechanics, ignoring its particulate nature.

On the issue of the energy carried by a wave system:

J.H. Michell discovered a general solution to the problem of a ship's wake in 1898. His solution assumes a ship of a given form, moving with uniform velocity in an inviscid liquid. Certain assumptions must be made in deriving the solution , resulting in the algorithm being valid for relatively sleek, slender ships, but not for fat or blunt ones. A practical implementation of his algorithm requires additional calculations to account for viscous forces (Leo L.'s "Michlet" program, for example), and the shape of the underwater body must be known (ie, trim and sinkage at a given speed must already be accounted for in the definition of the hull shape). See attached.