The Sea

2 Pages 471 Words

I have probably gone to the beach, lakes, mountains, rivers, Death Valley, Grand Canyon etc. several hundred times combined and enjoyed the beauty of them all but did not know how it all came to be. I now know that everything happens in a chain of events. It appears to me that everything on this earth is affected by a related process.

I found the chapter on the ocean and it components most interesting. I have developed a whole new appreciation for the activity of the waves, the ocean sea life and the configuration of the shoreline caused by the ocean activity.

The sea is the most obvious feature of the earth's surface. Beneath this water are the familiar sands of the beaches, bottoms of bays, and the inshore ocean. I have learned that farther offshore, this water covers an amazing marine scenery of underwater canyons, trenches, mountains, and plains.

Lithogenous sediments are the major sediments on the ocean floor. They are derived from the chemical and mechanical weathering of rocks.

Waves are changeable and momentary features of the sea's surface. All waves, from the smallest ripple to the most destructive tsunami, have common characteristics. They all have crests, troughs, wave heights, lengths, and periods. Also, water particles that make up the waves all move in identical circular patterns. The circular pattern is up and forward in the crest and down and back in the trough. It is only when the wave becomes unstable that the circular motion is destroyed. The water particles then begin to move at the same speed as the moving waveform. Breaking waves release a tremendous amount of stored energy on a beach face. This energy moves the sand about and changes the configuration of the bottom. As the bottom configuration is changed by the waves, it changes the characteristics of incoming waves. This interaction between the waves and the bottom results in the beach face having an everlasting wave pattern.

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