New model of ocean waves sheds fresh light on the spread of microplastic pollution – Physics World
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Soft matter and liquids
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Home »<br>Condensed matter » Soft matter and liquids » New model of ocean waves sheds fresh light on the spread of microplastic pollution
Soft matter and liquids
Research update
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New model of ocean waves sheds fresh light on the spread of microplastic pollution
25 Jun 2026 Sponsored by EPL
Courtesy: shutterstock/Willyam Bradberry
Nature is always more complicated than the models we use to describe it. Ocean waves, for example, are constantly evolving. They grow when wind transfers kinetic energy to the water’s surface. They interact with each other in highly nonlinear ways. And once the wind dies down, their internal viscosity makes them dissipate away to nothing, leaving behind a surface as flat as glass.
This process is familiar to anyone who’s ever been to the seaside, yet physicists’ go-to models of water moving through the ocean essentially ignore it. Instead, the standard theory of wave transport, known as classical Stokes drift theory, concentrates on describing the flow of steady waves with finite amplitude. And while extensions of the theory incorporate complications such as nonlinear wave shapes, uneven seabeds and the inertia of particles carried along by the waves, they don’t account for waves that grow and fade over time.
For Marco Edoardo Rosti, a physicist at Japan’s Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), this shortcoming has real-world consequences. “There is increasing interest in understanding near-surface transport processes because they are directly connected to problems such as pollutant dispersion, microplastic accumulation, sediment transport, and air-sea exchange,” he explains. “Since these processes depend sensitively on particle trajectories, even subtle modifications of the drift mechanism may become important over long times.”
Wave mechanics (left to right) Team members Tatsuo Izawa, Giulio Foggi Rota and Marco Eduardo Rosti. (Courtesy: Marco Eduardo Rosti/OIST)" title="Click to open image in popup" href="https://physicsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/tatsuo-izawa-giulio-foggi-rota-and-marco-eduardo-rosti.jpg">Wave mechanics Team members (l-r) Tatsuo Izawa, Giulio Foggi Rota and Marco Eduardo Rosti. (Courtesy: Marco Eduardo Rosti/OIST)<br>In a study published in the journal EPL, Rosti and his colleagues Alessandro Chiarini, Tatsuo Izawa and Giulio Foggi Rota explored ways of remedying this deficiency. They focused on the simplest type of wave evolution: a freely decaying, single-frequency gravity wave, one where the force of gravity acts to restore equilibrium and smooth out the surface of the water. Physics World spoke with the team about the findings.
What is the most important advance in this...