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The Largest Recorded Tsunami Was 50 Years Ago
An anonymous reader writes "July marks the 50th anniversary of the world's largest tsunami — a 1,720-foot-tall wave in Lituya Bay, Alaska. It was triggered by a chain reaction of events that began with a magnitude 7.7 earthquake on the Fairweather Fault, which dislodged a rock fall of 40 million cubic yards, that fell 3,000 feet and splashed into the northwest end of Lituya Bay to generate the wave. This article includes survivor accounts, maps, a satellite image, and photos taken right after the event." To be fair, eyewitness accounts put the height of the wave as it came toward their boats at perhaps 100 feet. The tsunami scoured the land of vegetation and soil to a height of 1,720 feet above sea level, however.
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from TFA
"The force of the wave removed all trees and vegetation from elevations as high as 1720 feet (524 meters) above sea level. This is the highest wave that has ever been known."
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
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5,280 feet.
This type of tsunami is the exact same as what is predicted will ultimately wipe out most of the Eastern Seaboard. It will make Katrina and even the tsunami that hit in the Indian Ocean look like a cake walk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/aug/10/science.spain
Go Illini!!!
I blame women. No woman wants to go from weighing 95 units to weighing 209 units.
Great theory, but there are 2.2lbs in a kilo, not 2.2kg in a lb.
So a 95lb woman weighs about 43kg, not 209kg.
If you look at the map of the damage, the 1725 figure comes from the slope directly opposite where the honking huge chunk of rock fell 3000' feet to land in the water - which probably displaced all the water straight up and over the spur where the 1725 figure was recorded and then damage along the rest of the bay was more in line with the 100' figure.
The nautical mile makes some sense. It's one minute of arc along a meridian of the Earth.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I believe that we developed a decimal number system because of our fingers. And when the number system developed so did our language. Our adult brains are tuned to decimal numbers because that is the language and system we were educated with. I don't believe that the brains of children are specially tuned to accept a decimal system.
In modern life we don't often use our fingers for manipulating large numbers. In fact our technology works more naturally in binary or hexadecimal. The only thing keeping us using decimal is our language and history, not our fingers.
So the magical thing about SI is not its use of base ten, but rather its use of a consistent base regardless of unit. The cumbersome thing about Imperial units is that the base changes when measuring different things: 12 inches to the foot, 3 feet to the yard, 1760 yards to the mile, 16 ounces to the pound, 4 quarts to the gallon. It's hard to remember which base applies to each unit and it's hard to constantly switch among bases when doing calculations.
1 liter is a volume of 10cm x 10cm x 10cm.