WOO-HOO! A surfer rides an artificial wave at the Surf Ranch.
The Perfect Wave?
How a surfer and an engineer designed a wave-making machine.
This summer, people will head to the beach to go surfing. But if ocean conditions aren’t just right, thrill seekers may never get a chance to catch a wave. What a bummer!
World-champion surfer Kelly Slater decided to solve this problem. He wanted to create a machine that makes waves. That way people wouldn’t need good ocean conditions or have to travel to the beach to go surfing.
Adam Fincham
In 2006, Slater met Adam Fincham. He’s an engineer at the University of Southern California. Fincham studies how water behaves. Slater challenged him to invent a wave machine.
After 10 years of work, they created the Kelly Slater Wave Company Surf Ranch. It’s located in Lemoore, California—about 200 miles from the nearest beach. To design it, Fincham followed these steps in the engineering-design process.
1. Identify the Problem
Wave pools were first invented in the 1920s. They create waves using paddles or pumps that move water. These waves aren’t as large or as powerful as ocean waves. They aren’t shaped like them either. Because of this, they can’t be surfed like ocean waves. Fincham thought if he could copy how natural waves form, he could make waves that could be surfed.
2. Find Solutions
Fincham started researching how natural waves form. He also read other scientific studies on waves and observed the behavior of waves in computer simulations. Once he learned all he could about how waves form in the ocean, he started to plan his design.
3. Plan and Test
Natural waves begin as wind pushes water horizontally on the ocean’s surface. To make the wave pool’s water move in the same way, Fincham thought of using a hydrofoil (see Making Waves). This large piece of metal is pulled underwater. It’s like a snowplow. But instead of pushing snow, it pushes water. He tested many shapes of hydrofoils on a prototype wave pool. This working model was a quarter the size of an Olympic swimming pool. It took Fincham several years of tinkering with the hydrofoil’s shape to copy how ocean water moves.
The ocean’s floor also helps to form surfing waves. Fincham asked Slater which types of seafloors make the best waves. Then he gave the floor of his prototype wave pool similar conditions as the ocean floor
An aerial view of the Surf Ranch
4. Build It!
In 2015, Slater and Fincham built the Surf Ranch—a full-size version of the wave pool. And this year, it will be the site of the world’s first-ever pro competition on artificial waves.
“Everyone who surfs it is blown away,” says Jessi Miley-Dyer, the commissioner of the World Surfing League. She hopes the invention will help surfers practice their skills: “Being so far from the coast, in the middle of a field, and to know that a perfect wave is coming each time—it’s such a cool thing.”
