Hints for answering the questions for the GEOL 3030 Tsunami Travel Time exercise
GEOL 3030 - University of Georgia

        This exercise asks you to calculate travel times for a tsunami. As for travel times with automobiles, we can get time from the relationship

distance = rate x time

where the "rate" is speed. More to our purposes of calculating a travel time,

time = distance / speed

which, if we're thinking about units (and we always should be) works because

time (hours) = distance (kilometers) / speed (kilometers/hour)

 

        Thus the first thing you need to do is decide what controls the speed of a tsunami. Your lecture notes should have equations for speed of waves, one for deep-water waves and one for shallow-water waves. It's up to you to decide if tsunamis are deep-water waves or shallow water waves, which establishes whether you will use the deep-water-wave equation or the shallow-water-wave equation, which in turn establishes whether wavelength or depth controls the speed of the tsunami.

 

Contact your dutiful instructor if you have more questions!.

 

To the GEOL 3030 page.