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  • Ruining Your Day at the Beach
  • with Doug Levin

You park your car behind the dune, walk the boardwalk to the beach. The first part of the beach is the berm, where you put your towel. Then you walk down the beach face into the water and you’re on the low tide terrace. You will learn the different parts of the beach and how they contribute to its mechanics. Why do beaches erode? Why does it help to swim along the beach to get out of a rip current? The two major reasons that beaches erode is tied to the time between waves breaking on the beach and the sediment type that makes up the beach. You will also examine sand samples from all over the world and determine why beaches are black, white, peppered, or red. You will also learn the difference between tropical and temperate beaches. One session will talk about beach mechanics, and one session will be a “lab” analyzing actual sand samples.

Feedback from Doug’s last course:

“Bring him back for another geology class!”

“Great!  I’ll listen to him any time.  Interesting, informative.”

“Outstanding presentation!  We hope that Doug will be back in the Forum line-up in the future!”

“5 stars for the instructor, the topic, his deck, his knowledge, and his enthusiasm. I look forward to learning with him again.”

Course Links:

Session 1

Session 2

Levin

Doug Levin

Doug Levin, Chief Innovation Officer for The Center for Environment & Society at Washington College, has over 40 years of experience mapping globally dispersed sea floors with a myriad of technologies. He has detected oil seep off of Cartagena, SA; done Lease Block Hazard Surveys; and worked on pipeline and fiber optic cable route selections in the Gulf of Mexico, the Aleutian Islands, and the Mediterranean. He has done shipwreck imaging in Thunder Bay; located Cortez’s treasure in Veracruz; and searched for evidence of Noah’s deluge in the Black Sea. For three weeks, he was the NOAA Liaison to BP for the subsurface oil monitoring during Deepwater Horizon, responsible for creating the daily report to the U.S. President. He was the first to use sonar to find ghost crab pots in the Chesapeake Bay and use it to evaluate the Bay bottom for suitable oyster habitat. He’s been teaching K - Gray for nearly 40 years and creating programs where you design, build, and operate working underwater robots; or you break the world's record for small buoys holding golf balls.

  • Cost: FREE
  • Course Type: Recording, Library
  • Semester: Spring 2022
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