Originally Answered: Why are the waves always towards the shore ? ANSWER 1: Out at sea, waves tend to travel in the same direction as the wind is blowing. But the questioner is right — inshore they often move towards the shoreline. This is caused by the effects of both diffraction and refraction.

By definition, the residence time is the amount of material in the reservoir, divided by either the inflow or the outflow (they are equal when the reservoir is at equilibrium). If there are multiple inflows or outflows, then we use the sum of the outflows or inflows to determine the residence time.

residence time: Tr = V/I [T], a measure of the average time a molecule of water spends in a reservoir. The residence time defined for steady-state systems is equal to the reservoir volume divided by the inflow or outflow rate.

Residence time plays an important role in chemistry and especially in environmental science and pharmacology. Under the name lead time or waiting time it plays a central role respectively in supply chain management and queueing theory, where the material that flows is usually discrete instead of continuous.

3,000 to 3,230 years

The Caribbean sea is so clear and blue because has little presence of plankton – or other substances – and it’s relatively shallow so most of the light is reflected. Water gets its color from the interaction of sunlight with water and the substances in the water.

The high concentration of salt in ocean water lowers its freezing point from 32° F (0° C) to 28° F (-2° C). As a result, the ambient temperature must reach a lower point in order to freeze the ocean than to freeze freshwater lakes.

But Hanson said waves won’t freeze in place, as water simply won’t go from liquid to solid that fast. When waves are in freezing water, they’ll begin to turn into a slushy form or ice known as frazil, Hanson explained.

The huge frozen waves first captured in Antarctica were created when ice was compressed and the trapped air bubbles were squeezed out. The blue colour results from melting and re-freezing, which forces out trapped air and allows the blue in the visible light spectrum to pass through while the red is absorbed.

Ice shoves are caused by ocean currents, strong winds, or temperature differences pushing ice onto the shore, creating piles up to 12 metres (40 feet) high. Some have described them as ‘ice tsunamis’, but the phenomenon works like an iceberg. Arctic communities can be affected by ice shoves.