my 9yr old son and i whould like to know how dose a sunami start?

Question

we were watching csi and he wanted to know just how it starts is it the waves or he says the wind?

Answer 1

Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes under the ocean. Many of them are caused by our previous nuclear bomb testings. Our bomb testings have reeked havoc on world weather beginning in 1992 when our testings caused world wide "natural" catastrophes.

Answer 2

Neither really. I'm no scientist but I am a surfer.A Tsunami starts when something moves a whole bunch of sea water. Its usually earthquakes. The seafloor either rises or drops and the water is pushed away ( fill the tub and put a baking sheet on the bottom. Then lift the tray halfway to the surface. The water flows off of the now shallower bottom. These waves move at a really fast rate because they are not surface waves. A tsunami that hits shore and is 50 feet tall can pass under a ship without the ship even feeling it. When it gets to the shore, usually the water moves away from the beach first. This is bad because often people on the beach don't leave or even go closer to see the now exposed sea floor. Then the Tsunami comes in and fetches up on the slope of the shore. Since it was going forward so fast but now cant , the momentum carries the water upward and then inward ( like if you slide a bowl of soup across the table, but then stop sliding it abruptly, the liquid is still in motion and keeps going over the side of the bowl). Thats about it. There have been Tsunami caused by giant landslides and volcanic eruptions. Also, Tsunami can come ashore and only be a foot tall- it depends on a whole bunch of things-but Tsunami aren't always disastrous. Hope that helped.

Answer 3

The term "tsunami" comes from the Japanese words(津波、つなみ) meaning harbor ("tsu", 津) and wave ("nami", 波). Although in Japanese tsunami is used for both the singular and plural, in English tsunamis is often used as the plural.

A tsunami is a wave or series of waves in the ocean that can be hundreds of miles long and have been known to reach heights of up to 34 ft (10.5 m). These "walls of water" travel as fast or faster than a commercial jet. The walls of water are capable of inflicting massive damage along coastal lands.

Waves in the ocean are created by a number of things (gravitational pull, underwater activity, atmospheric pressure), but the most common source for waves is the wind. The most common causes of tsunamis are underwater earthquakes.

You can see diagrams here:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/tsunami.htm

The most significant kind of tsunamis, for the geologist, are created not by quakes or any earthly process but by cosmic impacts.
http://geology.about.com/cs/basics_hazard/a/aa072698.htm

A tsunami is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced on a massive scale. Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, large meteorite impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have the potential to generate a tsunami.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami

Tsunami can be generated when the plate boundaries abruptly deform and vertically displace the overlying water. Such large vertical movements of the Earth’s crust can occur at plate boundaries. Subduction earthquakes are particularly effective in generating tsunami.

Submarine landslides (which are sometimes triggered by large earthquakes) as well as collapses of volcanic edifices may also disturb the overlying water column as sediment and rocks slide downslope and are redistributed across the sea floor. Similarly, a violent submarine volcanic eruption can uplift the water column and form a tsunami.

Tsunami's are surface gravity waves that are formed as the displaced water mass moves under the influence of gravity and radiates across the ocean like ripples on a pond.

Answer 4

They usually form from underwater earthquakes that displace a significant portion of land, either upheaval or collapse. They can form from earthquakes close to the shoreline, but are usually very small. They have also been know to be caused from huge landslides, either underwater on from shore.

Answer 5

Tsunami's are caused by sudden land displacement under or alongside of Oceans. Those are- earthquakes; landslides that fall into an ocean, or a large meterorite hitting the ocean.

Answer 6

if a high intensity earthquake occures in sea than due to high pressure waves of water sunami occures

Answer 7

you have to imagine a massive mountain being created under water, which pushes massive amounts of water to the surface, which than creates a bis wave.

Answer 8

They are caused by earthquakes or earthquake in the ocean.