Tsunamis Lesson 45 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 A tsunami is not one giant surfing wave: it is a series of huge waves made when something suddenly shoves a vast amount of sea water, usually the sea floor jerking up or down in an undersea earthquake. 1 In the deep ocean a tsunami races along as fast as a jet plane, yet it may be less than a metre high, so a ship can ride over it without noticing. 2 Near the coast the water gets shallow, the wave slows down and piles up, sometimes over 10 metres high, and floods far inland like the whole sea climbing onto the land. 3 Slosh the water at one end of a full bath with your hand: the wave crosses low and fast, then heaps up and spills over at the shallow end; a tsunami does that with a whole ocean. 4 Often the sea first drains far back from the beach, which tempts people to go and look; the right thing is to run to high ground at once, because the waves come in a train and the first is often not the biggest. 5 A tsunami is a series of huge waves caused by something suddenly moving a lot of water, usually an undersea earthquake. 6 In the deep ocean a tsunami travels as fast as a jet plane, about 700-800 km/h, yet is often less than a metre high. 7 Near the shore a tsunami slows down and piles up, sometimes over 10 metres high, and floods far inland. 8 Often the sea suddenly drains far back from the beach just before a tsunami arrives. 9 A tsunami is a train of several waves, minutes apart, and the first is often not the biggest. 10 The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra, killed about 230,000 people in 14 countries. 11 In 2011 a magnitude 9 earthquake sent a tsunami into Japan that killed about 18,000 people and damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant. 12 Tsunami warning centres use earthquake sensors and pressure gauges on the sea floor to warn coasts. 13 Tsunamis can also be caused by landslides, volcanic eruptions and, very rarely, meteorite impacts. 14 About 8,000 years ago an underwater landslide off Norway, the Storegga Slide, sent a tsunami onto Scotland and the low land of Doggerland, now under the North Sea. 15 Tsunamis are sometimes called tidal waves, but they have nothing to do with tides. 16 If the sea suddenly drains away or a strong earthquake is felt at the coast, the safe thing is to move to high ground or far inland at once. ← previous Earthquakesnext → Volcanoes: how and where↑ back to Geography This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/45-tsunamis/