Sunday, March 13, 2011

Waves And Waves

If you're much of a geek, you'll like this. Bonus squee for mathheads and radio geeks!

5 comments:

LC Scotty said...

So Japan is a Yagi for Tsunamis?

rickn8or said...

LC Scotty-- Can you contemplate the wave patterns from an 8.9 earthquake on the WEST coast of Japan??

Anonymous said...

Reminded me of high school physics long long ago. We had wave tanks to experiment with and show a number of different properties of waves.

Do they still do that?

A ham that went on to become an EE.

Terry
Florida

Anonymous said...

LC Scotty: I don't know about Japan being a Yagi, but in the Boxing Day tsunami you can look at the USGS animation (I can't find it in a quick search) and see that the Andaman Islands served as an end-stacked array that focused the waves on Sri Lanka. Those islands are part of the system that lies on the rift.

Regards,
Ric

Stranger said...

In non-technical language, Japan is the reflector, sending waves in phase with the "primary radiator." So the resultant tsunami was at least 3 dB stronger (as much as twice as high on our side of the pond) than it would have been without the land mass.

An equivalent tremblor on the other side of the islands would result in a standing wave. Don't care to be around if that happens. Think Atlantis.

But the next Pacific big one is likely to be be between Frisco and Vancouver. Turn the pattern around and aim it at Japan.

And of course, we still have Nemesis in our midst, in the form of the New Madrid fault. Which is due.

Stranger