Exploring the Erosive Energy of Waves

This week, being inspired by the recent storms, we decided to focus our attention on erosion. Erosion is the removal of sand from a beach to deeper water or alongshore into inlets, caused usually by wind or water.

This week our scientists built our own beach using sand and a paint tray. We built up our beach in the shallow portion of the tray and added water to the deeper portion. We then used our hands to begin to make waves. As some budding scientists discovered, the sand was immediately either pushed back from our original handmade shoreline or drawn into the deeper portion of the tray and remained underwater. Next, we cleared the tray and built a new beach, this time we added larger rocks in the middle of the “beach” that served as a “headland” to see what, if anything, that would change. Again, we began to make waves. This time however, we noticed the sand behind the “headland” seemed much more protected than the open sand. This proved that having something slowing down the waves also helped slow down the erosion process. 

Lab Notes from our scientists, Maya and Annabel

At Greenwich Point Park we have cordgrass, this has been monumental in slowing down the erosion of our shoreline. Truly, nothing short of global cooling would be able to prevent further diminishing of our beaches, but our trusty cordgrass and the seawall we have here are certainly helping. 

Kelly McQuade, 2021 Seaside Center Naturalist