The determination of an amplification factor for a given harbor and a given wave period is an important problem concerning long period oscillations in harbors. The present study presents a means of comput¬ing the response of a rectangular harbor to the excitation by incident waves. With the aid of a digital computer, the complete response curve can be computed for any rectangular harbor. The results of experiments on model harbors have confirmed the validity of the computation. Exper¬imental response curves, however, do not show the marked increase of the amplification factor at resonance with a narrowing of the harbor entrance, because of energy dissipation in a model harbor. The analysis of the re-sponse factor for waves with a continuous power spectrum also suggests that a narrowing of the entrance will lead to a reduction in the ampli-tude of long period oscillations in actual harbors, because of increasing sharpness of the response curves- and the presence of energy dissi¬pation mechanisms in harbors. Hence, the problem of the harbor paradox presented by Miles and Munk does not exist in actual harbors.
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