EXHIBITS > WAVES > MOTION BEACH

MOTION BEACH is a hands-on laboratory in which kids and grownups can experiment with the dynamic relationships of waves and sandy shorelines. a challenge for both "waveMakers" and "beachMakers". At one end of the 12' x 12' tank, kids fortify the shoreline with a variety of devices: jetties, groins, bulldozers, scrapers, seawalls, bulkheads, breakfronts, sand walls, trenches, etc. Small houses placed or implanted (with stilts) provide another challenge and a sense of scale. At the other end of the tank, "waveMakers" augment a slow steady motor produced wave train. Their goal: to alter the beach.  
Wave tank

 

 

Wave tank motion
This looping sequence is a four hour stretch of time lapse footage showing the formation of a barrier beach which grows from an eroding cliff and stretches out towards the "lighthouse" in the lower right corner.

A frame-grabbing computer records time-lapse movies of the events taking place in the tank, playing back the last hour. The action is controlled by the user and makes visible some of the dynamic transformations within the wave tank. Motion Beach screens