The bending of water waves as they encounter different depths
and bottom conditions, or of other waves as they pass from one
medium to another of different properties. The bending of waves
as they approach a shore so that their crests make no more than
a 5° angle with the shoreline. The re-orientation of a wave so
that it approaches a shoreline at a more perpendicular angle.
This process is caused by the differential reduction of water
depth as a linear wave approaches a curved shoreline. A
reduction in water depth causes a wave to slow down causing the
waves approaching a nonlinear shoreline to curve with the
shore's shape. The process by which a wave is bent or turned
from its original direction. In sea waves, as a wave approaches
a shore obliquely, part of it reaches the shallow water near the
shore while the rest is still advancing in deeper water; the
part of the wave in the shallower water moves more slowly than
the part in the deeper water. In seismic waves, refraction
results from the wave encounterin