A tsunami struck the coast of Japan at 1AM on January 28th, 1700. There were no

Question

A tsunami struck the coast of Japan at 1AM on January 28th, 1700. There were no large earthquakes in Japan that day, so the tsunami must have come from elsewhere. Some scientists have suggested that this tsunami was generated by a very large earthquake on the coast of Oregon and Washington. Your job is to figure out what time the earthquake would have occurred in Oregon for the tsunami to arrive in Japan when it did. There are Native American accounts of a very large earthquake and tsunami on the Oregon coast on a winter night a little over 300 years ago, but there are no known written records from Oregon in 1700 that would give the exact date and time, so we have to do this calculation ourselves. Things you need to know are: • this tsunami would have traveled across the ocean at 480 mph (since the metric system was not in use in 1700 we will make an exception and not use metric units in this problem!) • it is 4800 miles from the coast of Oregon to the coast of Japan • Japan is 16 hours ahead of Oregon, so the local time in Japan when the tsunami arrived was 1AM on January 28th, but at that same moment the local time in Oregon was 9AM on January 27th
1. How many hours would it take for the tsunami to travel from Oregon to Japan?
2. So what time and date would the earthquake have occurred in Oregon to account for the tsunami in Japan (make sure your answer is in local time for Oregon, not Japan)?
3.Does your answer to the last question support the Native American accounts?

Explanation / Answer

1. speed of Tsunami = 480 mph

distance = 4800 mph

time taken for tsunami to reach Japan = 4800 /480 = 10 hours

2)

the tsunami occurred 10 hours before it occurred in JAPAN ..

again JAPAN is 16 hours ahead

so the time in OREGON when tsunami hit JAPAN was

28th JAN , 1 AM - 16 HRS = 27TH JAN , 9AM

SO the time in OREGON when Tsnami ocurred there was

27TH JAN , 9 AM - 10 HRS = 26TH JAN , 11 PM

C) YEAH IT WAS A WINTER NIGHT ..SO I SUPPORTS THE NATIVE AMERICAN ACCOUNTS

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