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The “Beta” Version

MIT/WHOI Joint Program student Stephanie Waterman holds the “beta boat,” a unique instrument she built with physical oceanographer John Whitehead and engineer Keith Bradley for her experiments on how ocean currents may form. Essentially a free-floating plunger, the ‘boat’s’ motor drives a disc up and down, generating waves in a rotating tank that mimics Earth’s ocean. Waterman did her experiments in the geophysical fluid dynamics laboratory at WHOI, which boasts a long history of studying theoretical aspects of ocean motion.
(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)