The Navy has to test its ships somewhere, but the way the Naval Surface Warfare Center is using wave-testing is truly fascinating.
The center's indoor ocean, which is housed in suburban Maryland, lies in a pool the size of a football field and contains 12 million gallons of water. In it, the Naval Surface Warfare Center uses 216 electronic wave boards to mimic eight types of ocean conditions, making the indoor ocean "the most sophisticated scientific wave-testing basin of its size in the world," according to Smithsonian magazine. Smithsonian's Abigail Tucker likens the wave boards to "giant piano keys, whose scales and chords are waves."
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