GEO 1013 Module 06 INV(1) PDF

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assignment module 6...

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GEO 1013 – Investigation 6 Worksheet Go to the following link at the UTSA library, watch the NOVA film and answer the following questions. https://utsa.kanopy.com/video/nova-japan-s-killer-quake

1. March 11, 2011; 2:46 p.m., Japanese time: 60 miles off the northeast coast, a massive earthquake. 2. As seismic waves race towards shore. The fastest waves, called P waves, travel at 4 miles a second. 15 seconds later they hit land. Japan's detection systems instantly pick them up. 3. The coastal city of Sendai lies just 80 miles from the epicenter. 4. Ninety-three miles southwest of the epicenter they slam into Fukushima Daiichi, home to an ageing nuclear power station, housing six reactors. 5. With the reactors stopped, there's no power to drive the cooling pumps. Emergency diesel generators take over, pumping coolant through the reactor. The Fukushima plant survives the earthquake intact. 6. Scientists 3800 miles away at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, in Hawaii, receive emergency alerts. Researchers around the world see the event unfold. 7. The Earth's crust is made up of several continent-sized slabs of rock: tectonic plates. Japan lies at the point where the Pacific plate rams into the Eurasian plate at three inches a year, about the same speed your fingernails grow. 8. Over centuries, immense stress builds up, until suddenly the plates snap, causing an earthquake 9. The energy that drove this earthquake had been building up for a couple of hundred years, caused by the movement of the Pacific plate towards the Eurasian plate. 10. The quake lasts an unprecedented five minutes. 11. Loosely packed and waterlogged ground near the surface starts to behave like a liquid. 12. Scientists upgrade this quake to a magnitude 9, a thousands times more powerful than the devastating 2010 Haiti quake. 13. The upward motion thrusts a four-mile-deep mass of water upward. When the dome collapses back, immense waves race out across the ocean, just three feet high and over 60 miles from front to back. A tsunami is born.

14. Travelling at over 500 miles per hour, the wave takes just minutes to reach the coast. 15. Here, the shallower seafloor slows down the front of the wave. The wave's fast rear races in; it soon catches up with the front. 16. Near the coast, the swell becomes a breaking wave. 17. The tsunami travels faster in deep water and reaches land more quickly. 18. Cliffs, bays and inlets along the shoreline help determine how a tsunami behaves. 19. The water that hits the coast will be well in excess of a billion probably 10 billion tons of water. 20. The earthquake causes the whole coastline to drop by up to 3 feet, lowering Miyako's walls and making the tsunami much worse. All along the coast this sudden drop in the height of the land puts towns in danger.

21. The tsunami's destructive march inland overwhelms sea walls erases whole towns and sets Japan on the path to a nuclear crisis. 22. During the night, fires rage across the wasteland. Oil from factories and natural gas from ruptured lines, set hundreds of square miles of debris on fire. 23. This was basically the first big ocean-crossing tsunami that had happened in 40 years. 24. In Hawaii there is tens of millions of dollars in damage. 25. Ten hours later, and over 5000 miles from the quake, the tsunami, now smaller and weaker, finally hit California 26. Boats, trucks and cars were dumped on top of buildings, much higher than the recorded Height of the wave. 27. That happens because, as the water is pushing through the restricted areas, like the streets and towns, it is being effectively funneled The water has to go somewhere, so it goes up. 28. In the week that follows the main quake, there are over 500 aftershocks 29. At Fukushima power plant, the incredible heat of the fuel rods generates hydrogen gas, which explodes 30. Estimates put the death toll from the quake and tsunami at over 20000

31. When an earthquake like this happens, all of the stress in the Earth's crust gets transferred somewhere else. It adds loading to other parts of the crust. 32. What science can do is help tell planners, engineers to make building stronger, to make designs of buildings and cities resilient. 33. Stretching from Vancouver Island to Northern California is Cascadia a vast and volatile fault line. 34. Cascadia could rupture in a huge magnitude 9 quake. 35. A mega-quake off the Pacific Northwest coast would create a tsunami similar to Japan's....