{"id":7506,"date":"2017-04-16T20:34:49","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T00:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7506"},"modified":"2017-04-16T20:51:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T00:51:35","slug":"the-wreck-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald-the-science-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7506","title":{"rendered":"The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: the *science* version"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My last G+ post reported this:<\/p>\n<p>Something out there kills about one oceangoing ship a week.<\/p>\n<p>It is probably freakishly large waves &#8211; well outside the ranges predicted by simple modeling of fluid dynamics and used to set required force-tolerance levels in ship design.  Turns out these can be produced by nonlinear interactions in which one crest in a wave train steals energy from its neighbors.<\/p>\n<p>Much more in the video.<\/p>\n<p>So go watch the video &#8211; this BBC documentary from 2002 on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Dt280noUFQ8\">Rogue Waves<\/a>.  It&#8217;s worth your time, and you&#8217;ll learn some interesting physics.<\/p>\n<p>As I&#8217;m watching, I&#8217;m thinking that the really interesting word they&#8217;re not using is &#8220;soliton&#8221;. And then, doing some followup, I learn two things: the solutions to the nonlinear Schr&ouml;dinger equation that describe rogue waves are labeled &#8220;Peregrine solitons&#8221;, despite not actually having the non-dissipative property of your classical soliton; and it is now believed that the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald  was probably wrecked by a rogue wave back in &#8217;75.<\/p>\n<p>In a weird way this made it kind of personal for me.  I used to joke, back when people knew who he was, that Gordon Lightfoot and I have exactly the same four-note singing range.  It is a fact that anything he wrote I can cover effectively; I&#8217;ve sung and played <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A\">The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald<\/a> many times.<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;m texting my friend Phil Salkie (he who taught me to solder, and my reference for the Tinker archetype of hacker) about this, and we started filking.  And here&#8217;s what eventually came out: Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the <em>science!<\/em> version:<\/p>\n<blockquote><literal>\nThe lads in the crew saw that soliton come through<br \/>\nIt stove in the hatches and coamings<br \/>\nHer hull broached and tore, she was spillin&#8217; out ore<br \/>\nThat rogue put an end to her roamings.<\/p>\n<p>Does anyone know where the Gaussian goes<br \/>\nWhen the sea heights go all superlinear?<br \/>\nA Schr&ouml;dinger wave for a watery grave<br \/>\nIt&#8217;ll drown both the saint and the sinner.\n<\/literal><\/blockquote>\n<p>That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My last G+ post reported this: Something out there kills about one oceangoing ship a week. It is probably freakishly large waves &#8211; well outside the ranges predicted by simple modeling of fluid dynamics and used to set required force-tolerance levels in ship design. Turns out these can be produced by nonlinear interactions in which&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7506\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: the *science* version<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7506"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7514,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7506\/revisions\/7514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}