CM_Alg

Claire Masse' Algebra 1 3A Mrs. Wagner 5-17-11 Tsunamis ﻿ ﻿ ﻿4 a. What is the name of the trench that represents the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean? Record the depth in meters. The name of this particula trench is the Puerto Rico Trench. It is approximately 8,605 meters or 28,231 feet.  b. Calculate the speed of a tsunami wave at this depth. The formula for finding the speed of a tsunami wave is: S=√gd Where s equals the speed, g equals acceleration due to gravity (in this case it would be 9.81), and the depth (in meters). So if g= 9.81 and d= 8,605 then s=290.54  9.81*8,605=84415.0 5 And √84415.05= 290.54 Meaning that if the water's depth was 8, 605 m then the speed would be 290.54 meters per second Huzzah! We have answered our second problem! Let us now move to the next one. 5. What is the name of the trench that represents the deepest point in the Indian Ocean? The Java Trench is the deepest point at 7,725 meters. b.Calculate the speed of a tsunami wave at this depth. Since we are already familiar with he formula I will continue on with a simple explanation on what variable is what number.  If g=9.81 and d=7,725 then s= 275.29 9.81*7,725=75782.25 √75782.25=275.29  This means the speed of a wave when the water's depth is 7,725 m wo uld be 275.29 meters per second. 6. Consider the tsunami that devastated the Sumatran coast on December 26, 2004. The center of the quake was 255 km from Sumatra and the depth at the location of the quake was approximately 3,962 meters. Some reports state that the wave slowed to 30 mph when it hit the coast. Find the initial speed of the wave. (Hint there are 0.3048 meters in a foot.) How does it compare with the speed at impact on the coast? First we will determine the initial speed. If g=9.81, d=3,962 then s= 197.15  9.81*3,962=38867.22   √38867.22=197.15   We now need to convert meters per second into miles pef\r hour because we are comparing this answer to 30mph. Your equation should look something like this:  (197.5m/1s)(1mi/1600m)(60sec/1min)(60min/1h)   Your answer will be 70,940mi/1600m and if we simplify this it will be 443.59mph   Since we will be comparing 443.59 mph to 30 mph we can easily divide to two to find how much faster one is to the other. 443.59/30=14.79  We can now understand that the speed of the tsunami before it hit land was almost 15 times faster than when and after it sruck land.