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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.
I live in the 21:st century, you insensitive clod!
states they where on 5 fathoms = 30 feet of water, the wave was 100 feet high (I'm guessing the guy means 100 feet above normal level) so that makes the wave 130 feet (40 m.) That is one fudging big wave, but its far from 1725 feet (525m.) high - its far more likely that the 130 feet of wave being pressed up the small valley will have so much force it will keep climbing up to that level.
said the guy that wasted the first post spot with 'frosty piss'... class act indeed. Pot, kettle, black.
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There is nothing inherently superior about the metric system.
Sure there is. Ease of unit conversion and ease of communication with the REST OF THE FREAKING WORLD. We live in a global economy - we should start acting like it.
Why does dividing by 10 matter so much, anyway? Because you have 10 fingers?
Because we use a base 10 counting system for most calculations. Having a measurement system that is highly compatible with the numeral system most humans use makes sense.
Really, we should be trying to move to a system of measure that is base 2.
Really? Go ahead and tell your mother you came 1011 miles to see her - I'm sure she'll be impressed.
The photos from the following day are impressive, but I'd like to compare it to what it looks like today: How much has been able to regrow in relatively cold climate in 50 years?
A tsunami may be only a few feet higher than average sea level as it crosses oceans, but when the mass of water piles up as it reaches shore, the runup can go hundreds of feet above sea level. If you're standing on the slope at a height of 800 feet above sea level, and the tsunami starts, which is more 'real' about the height of the tsunami -- the hundred-foot height of the wave in the open water of the bay, or that the runup is going to scour the ground clean almost a thousand feet farther up the slope than where you're standing?
I'd prefer that we used a hexadecimal system.
And how do you propose we convince every non computer geek in the world that this is a good idea? Further are you going to pay for the math classes virtually everyone will need?
Your idea fails the mom test miserably...
At what point do we call something a wave instead of a really friggin huge splash?
"Grandma, I walked eleven miles to see you."
The funny thing about non base-10 number systems is that our language can't say them without spelling them out. The old joke about "There are 10 kinds of people in the world..." isn't very funny if you say it aloud or in your head: "There are two kinds of people in the world" or "There are one zero kinds of people in the world".
So I believe it's our language, not our fingers, that makes base ten feel natural. If we had grown up accustomed to counting "one two three ten eleven twelve thirteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three thirty" then base four would feel natural. The characters "2506" would look as strange as hexadecimal and be as impossible to pronounce without spelling or conversion.
By the way, isn't the term "base 10" devoid of meaning? If our system were base four, then "base 10" would mean "base four" since the characters "10" in base four mean "4" in base ten. Whatever base you use, "10" is your way of writing the value of that base.
Back to the tsunami, it's disappointing to hear that the water was 290 fathoms high only very near it's source (the landslide). That's like saying "Your mama's so fat she jumped in the Pacific and made a tsunami a billion nanometers high."
This whole thing sounds like hogwash to me. Not the facts, but the reporting. First, they take the splash damage size as the wave height, even though one sentence later it's acknowledged that wasn't the case. And two, this isn't a Tsunami at all. It's a huge wave, certainly, but it's not a Tsunami. Among other things, you don't notice Tsunamis as huge waves on a boat - that's where the whole name comes from ("big wave at the harbour") - because japanese fishermen came home from the sea, hadn't noticed anything unusual, and found the entire village devastated.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In English, we call that a splash, not a wave. Have you Americans simplified the language so much that there is no longer a distinction?