GEOG 140 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Plate Tectonics, Pacific Plate

• School: University of Maryland
• Department: Geographical Sciences
• Course: GEOG 140
• Professor: Keith Yearwood

Document Summary

First half are notes from this video: https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=tphl3p-fedm. Energy built up for hundreds of years: 2 million times stronger than the little boy atomic bomb that was dropped on. P waves moved at 6 km/s instantly detected by sensors. Reactors at fukushima automatically turned off after detected the p-waves. Danger for reactors due to proximity to shore. 100 seconds later, s-waves hit tokyo, quake lasted unprecedented 5 mins. Liquefaction as the cracks move, water is pushed out. Over centuries, japanese plate compressing against pacific plate: japanese plate flipping up displaced tons of water like an explosion, creating waves going in all directions. Waves seemed unpredictable: height of wave varied town to town, were water was deeper, waves travelled faster. Ofunato hit first, little time to react, tsunami hit 20 minutes after quake. Tsunami travelled quickly on flat lands like farm land.