Sastrugi breaking equipment—ripples and waves are often undercut and the surface is hard and unforgiving, with constant minor topographic changes between ridge and trough. The words "sastrugi" and "zastrugi" are Russian-language plurals; the singular is "sastruga" or "zastruga". The form "sastruga" started as the German-language transliteration of the Russian word заструга (plural: заструги). A Latin-type analogica singular "sastrugus" is used in various writings on exploration of the South Pole, including Robert Falcon Scott's expedition's diaries and Ernest Shackleton's "The Heart of the Antarctic". Under the action of steady wind, free snow particles accumulate and drift like the sand grains in barchan
Surface wave detection by animals fish are still able to judge the distance of a wave’s source with only a single functioning neuromast when all others have been ablated. When presented with single-frequency or upward frequency-modulated waves, fish underestimate the distance of the wave source; this suggests the normal downward FM of capillary waves, which arises almost immediately in wave dispersion, is necessary for "A lineatus" to judge distance. This was confirmed in 1982 by presenting fish with waves with an artificially generated waveform so that at 7 cm the wave had the downward FM sweep of a wave 15 cm away, and fish responded