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 acoustic wave sensor substrate patterned with interdigitated electrodes. Strain and torque work in a similar manner, as application to the sensor will cause a deformation of the piezoelectric substrate. A surface acoustic wave temperature sensor can be fashioned from a piezoelectric substrate with a relatively high coefficient of thermal expansion in the direction of the length of the device. The accumulation of mass on the surface of an acoustic wave sensor will affect the surface acoustic wave as it travels across the delay line. The velocity "v" of a wave traveling through a solid is proportional to the square root of product of