Wave pounding
Encyclopedia
Wave pounding is the 'sledge hammer' effect of tonnes of water
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

 crashing against cliffs. It shakes and weakens the rocks leaving them open to attack from hydraulic action
Hydraulic action
Hydraulic action is strong enough to loosen sediment along the river bed and banks this will take rocks from the side of the banks and add it to the rivers loads. The water compresses the air in the crack, pushing it right to the back. As the wave retreats, the highly pressurized air is suddenly...

 and abrasion
Erosion
Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...

. Eroded material
Material
Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. Wood, cement, hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term "material" is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties that are used as inputs to...

 gets carried away by the wave
WAVES
The WAVES were a World War II-era division of the U.S. Navy that consisted entirely of women. The name of this group is an acronym for "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" ; the word "emergency" implied that the acceptance of women was due to the unusual circumstances of the war and...

. Wave Pounding is particularly fierce in a storm
Storm
A storm is any disturbed state of an astronomical body's atmosphere, especially affecting its surface, and strongly implying severe weather...

, where the waves are exceptionally large, and have a lot of energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK