British sea power: The Secret Lives of Waves

Adeela Warley

16 May 2011

Do you ever feel guilty about the amount of time you spend in front of the TV?

My guilty pleasures used to be 'MasterChef' and 'The Apprentice' until I came across David Malone's BBC4 documentary 'The Secret Lives of Waves'. What a gem it turned out to be.

It had just the right mix of:

Super geeky science - did you know there are professors of bubbles (acoustics)? Armed with the ocean as a laboratory and high-tech wave simulators these boffins revealed their secrets.
Mesmerising photography - capturing the awesome beauty and power of nature.
Philosophical musings - which linked the life cycle of waves to the life cycle of our own lives. How's this for a thought-provoking quote:

Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

Heraclitus

But best of all were the astounding and sometimes counter-intuitive facts:

Waves are not made of water.
It's the energy from pulsating bubbles which allows us to hear waves breaking and the poetic song of a babbling brook.
Some waves move and break sideways. Without this special type of wave the Gulf Stream would disappear and Europe would freeze over.

You can watch the next in this BBC4 Series - The Secret Life of the National Grid.

And you can help us campaign for more clean, green energy like wave power by becoming a Campaign Champion.

Adeela Warley, Head of Communications

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