And it's important factors in the ocean that will really impact how waves break. This leads us neatly into wave refraction. It's probably a term you've heard over the course of your surfing life.

Scientists have created a new class of laser beam that appears to violate long-held laws of light physics. Known as “spacetime wave packets,” these lasers follow different rules of refraction ...

The law of refraction first derived by Snellius and later introduced as the Huygens–Fermat principle 1, states that the incidence and refracted angles of a light wave at the interface of two ...

Light is well known to exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties, as imaged here in this ...More 2015 photograph. What's less well appreciated is that matter particles also exhibit those ...

Refraction occurs when light changes direction as it passes, e.g., ... Optical lattices are like "egg cartons" made of light, where atoms are held in place by standing light waves.

Light is a type of electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by the eye. It travels as a transverse wave. Unlike a sound waves, light waves do not need a medium to pass through, they can ...

The lowest energy light waves refract the least, while the highest energy waves exhibit the greatest refraction. The end result is a dispersion of light into a rainbow of colors.

Discover how wave refraction works, why it happens and how it affects surfing in this easy-to-understand guide.

This is refraction, and the way a wave breaks can also be impacted by what's going on under the surface on the ocean floor. So every surf spot in the world has its own unique footprint.