With Onno Bokhove i build a Hele Shaw cell: a very thin (2 mm) aquarium to test what waves and grains do when they hit the beach. Will they form a dune? A flat area? Perhaps a little beach lake? The individual grains , about 2 mm diameter, were followed using a high speed canmera and the positions that were known now could be used to check Onno's theory and calculations of waves and grains. It resulted in novel idea's how waves and beaches interact. And it was an interesting and exciting installation to build. The first setup used the motor of an old printer, later we bought slightly stronger gear. We experimented with the shape of the wavemaking rod, depth, size of the cell, made many movies of it.

It's not only for fun: Onno write several articles about it: PDF here and his site here