The "Tsunami"

That was some tsunami...all of like 1 or 2 feet of it...but at least no one got hurt and Kiss Me, Kate still went on! The tsunami warnings were triggered because the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile triggered some unusual patterns in the ocean. The reason why an earthquake thousands of miles away can affect us here in Hawaii is conservation of energy! The earthquake created a lot of kinetic energy which needs to be absorbed by something else when the earthquake stops because energy cannot be created or destroyed. The earthquake was the initial force that created the unusual waves and the tsunami scare on Saturday. The earthquake and the waves were examples of oscillations. There were both transverse and longitudinal waves involved because the particles moved both parallel and perpendicular to the direction of the waves. However, the particles do have net motion because an earthquake or tsunami would not create any damage if everything returned to its original spot. An estimated time of the tsunami arrival in Hawaii could have been predicted by using the equation for the speed of a wave: v=wavelength/ time, if the speed of the waves produced by the earthquake in Chile were known.