Spiral Development
This type of beach forms due to the refraction of approaching waves and their diffraction by an upcoast headland. The approaching wave front curves as a result of wave diffraction at the headland, which in turn causes the shoreline to bend and yield a log spiral shape. Log spiral beaches are often on swell-dominated coasts where waves generally approach the shoreline from one main direction at an oblique angle. The oblique approaching waves refract and diffract into the "shadow zone" which can be considered a relatively sheltered hook of beach behind the headland. Increase in sediment size, wave height, berm height, and swash zone gradient from the up coast headland generally characterizes the concave seaward curved part of the beach.
Read more about this topic: Logarithmic Spiral Beaches
Famous quotes containing the words spiral and/or development:
“What is art,
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art’s life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.”
—H.A.L. (Herbert Albert Laurens)