Tsunami Essay

Jan Marek

7.A

25/2/11

Early Warning One World Essay

Introduction

The word Tsunami comes from Japanese and means “harbor wave”. It is a large surface wave caused by disturbance under the water surface i.e. an underwater earthquake. These waves are usually up to 20 meters high and can travel in a speed of up to 1,000 km/h. In the history of mankind, they have been some of the most destructive natural happenings, with one recently killing up to 250,000 people. Tsunamis in particular are rather hard to detect by humans although some animals are aware of it in advance. Humans have learned to use a tool called the seismograph which graphs the movement of the ground and can therefore detect earthquakes, which are the cause of tsunamis.

Seismographs

As I have mentioned in my introduction, a seismograph is a tool that is used for graphing the movement of earth. Not only does it show whether an earthquake is happening but also how strong it is and even how it progresses in its strength.  This can warn us about disturbances in the earth’s crust and therefore help us in preventing thousands of fatalities. The oldest records of a seismograph-like tool go as far back as A.D. 136. This tool was created by Zhang Heng an ancient Chinese astronomer. During the history of its existence, the seismograph has changed a great lot. The ones that scientists use today are based on the one created by an English seismologist John Milne who had developed the horizontal pendulum seismograph in 1,880.  Modern seismographs are electromagnetic, meaning that they are based magnets whose purpose is to hold the mass. The pen below the mass detects and records the seismic events. When electric signals from the magnets are produced, they are sent onto a computer or other type of recorder.  The waves that are recorded by the seismograph can tell scientists quite a lot about the earthquake and therefore the tsunami. Through the amplitude,  we can observe how tall/strong the waves will be, through the frequency and/or wavelength we can see how fast the wave will travel. Both of these two things can be very useful when attempting to prepare for a tsunami.

As I have mentioned in the paragraph above, seismographs can be very useful, life-saving tools.  The problem as you could have guessed is that high quality also has a high price.  Because of this, it is mostly the developed countries that can afford such expenses. This is a major difficulty because tsunamis most commonly happen in the Pacific Ocean, especially around the “ring of fire” which are both surrounded by mostly developing countries which usually cannot afford to spend money on such technologies and would rather concentrate on such things as feeding their people.  When seismic waves are detected in various points and the approximate location of the epicenter is found, possible victims of the upcoming tsunami can be warned and gotten prepared.  Although this system often works perfectly such as many times in Japan, it surely isn’t perfect.  This could have been seen in a recent tsunami that had happened in Thailand. Although the recording of the seismographs was satisfactory, there could be a large failure observed in how the scientists communicated with the people, especially those that lived in the rural coastal areas of Thailand. The seismographs worked perfectly but were useless as the information failed to be passed on. This was a large problem and probably caused thousands of people whose lives could have been saved to die. Seismographs help us lower the jeopardy in which we put our lives, although the information can easily turn useless if not communicated properly.

Conclusion

As I have mentioned in my essay, seismographs are important for our society, especially thanks to their ability to detect earthquakes and therefore also predict tsunamis. There are also some disadvantages to these tools such as their relatively low availability. If we can find a way to distribute the information that we receive from our seismographs fast and reliably, then we can largely lower the fatalities that we get from tsunamis. Seismographs surely have a future and could be some of the most useful things that humanity has ever invented/used.

 

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