Making Waves

Dara Ó Briain (0:03)

I'm Hannah Fry, and I'm Dara Ó Briain.

Hannah Fry (0:05)

And this is Curious Cases.

Dara Ó Briain (0:07)

The show where we take your quirkiest questions, your crunchiest conundrums, and then we solve them with the power of science. I mean, do we always solve them?

Hannah Fry (0:14)

I mean, the hit rate is pretty low.

Dara Ó Briain (0:15)

But it is with science.

Cédric Beaume (0:17)

It is with science.

Hannah Fry (0:23)

Right, Dara, question for you. What's your favourite type of wave? Top three, top three waves.

Dara Ó Briain (0:28)

Oh, I mean, probably, you know, to a departing lover. That's one of my favourites.

Hannah Fry (0:33)

A fond farewell.

Dara Ó Briain (0:34)

Yeah, a fond farewell, absolutely.

Glynn Holt (0:35)

Yeah, that's one of my favourites.

Wiz (0:36)

Mexican wave?

Dara Ó Briain (0:37)

No, Mexican waves are the worst.

Glynn Holt (0:38)

Really?

Dara Ó Briain (0:39)

They're an insult to the teams who are playing the sport.

Wiz (0:41)

Do you think so?

Dara Ó Briain (0:42)

Oh, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like an absolute grinch about Mexican waves. I get furious when they start.

Hannah Fry (0:47)

I think it's like a really great example of kind of communal spirit.

Dara Ó Briain (0:52)

You're at something, you're watched the game, watched the sports that's unfolding. Could you imagine if you were playing, if you trained your entire life, gone through all of the hoops that are required to become a professional athlete, you're at the Olympics, for example, and instead of watching you try to win a gold medal, people are like, whoa, every every 30 seconds.

Hannah Fry (1:10)

No, no, I would take that as an indication I need to be less boring.

Dara Ó Briain (1:13)

Well, clearly, I mean, it may be a size of the sport, it's not been a very exciting game, but I guess I really, I'm like...

Glynn Holt (1:22)

The point with the wave, yeah.

Hannah Fry (1:24)

Looking, the next sporting event that I'm watching on TV, I'm going to look, scan in the ground for a grumpy you.

Dara Ó Briain (1:29)

I'll give a one-counter example, which they did one at the London Olympics. They had at the velodrome, they slowed down the wave because, you know, it has a natural speed.

Hannah Fry (1:40)

Of course.

Dara Ó Briain (1:40)

Yeah. And actually, there's probably a physics to it as well. People go, okay, this is the way it should go. And they made everyone do it really slowly. So it was just like, you would do that.

And it moved really slow. And it was between races. Okay. That's the key thing. But it moved slowly around the velodrome, and that was genuinely quite impressive.

Hannah Fry (1:58)

Because that was a perfect opportunity, surely, to try and time it with the lead bicycle.

Dara Ó Briain (2:03)

Oh my God, because they are just going around in a circle.

Hannah Fry (2:05)

Have a race between the Mexican wave and the bicycle itself. You know what, though, actually? In a weird way, Mexican waves are quite related to what we're going to be talking about today, because we are talking about resonance. We're talking about within a constrained environment, certain little frequencies, seeing what they do. Do you want to see the question that we got?

Dara Ó Briain (2:26)

Yeah, I'm really excited to see how it links with the Mexican wave. But yeah, I'd love to see the question.

Wiz (2:31)

Hi, Hannah and Dara. Very excited to be writing in. Long time curio, first time writer. My name is Wiz, but people generally know me as Elizabeth at work.

My question comes from my love of water as an ex-synchronized swimmer and the daughter of a sailor. Recently, I watched a video about Faraday waves in shallow pool, and they form these amazing geometric patterns. It got me wondering if these waves could happen if a person was in the water, floating just beneath the surface, and what about on the open sea? Can they occur there and what happens?

Looking forward to hearing your answers. Thanks very much. Bye.

Hannah Fry (3:05)

See, waves.

Glynn Holt (3:06)

Yeah.

Dara Ó Briain (3:07)

Okay, waves it is.

Glynn Holt (3:07)

Yeah.

Hannah Fry (3:08)

Yeah, waves, but also waves within a sort of contained setting.

Dara Ó Briain (3:11)

Okay, fine. So not like a stadium full of people.

Hannah Fry (3:14)

Not a stadium.

Glynn Holt (3:15)

All right. Okay.

Hannah Fry (3:16)

I'll tell you who we've got to talk to us about this topic. We have got Cédric Beaume, an Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics at the University of Leeds, who specializes in nonlinear fluid dynamics, my kind of guy.