WHOI physical oceanographers Karl Helfrich (left) and Claudia Cenedese
(striped sweater) demonstrate to student visitors how denser waters
sheet down slanted surfaces (such as, on a larger scale, a continental
slope). Whitehead has collaborated with Cenedese to study
eddies—swirling masses of water that are pinched off currents and
remain intact as they travel through the oceans. With Helfrich, he has
explored solitons—a solitary waves, or pulses of water, that can travel
long distances through fluids, maintaining their shapes and speeds. The
phenomenon occurs in water and in light.
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