Essay on science applied in waves

In this essay I will involve two types of mechanical waves to explain and describe their capacities when solving or provoking an issue. The first type of wave is the seismic waves which are transverse waves produced on earth and when in contact with a body of water, may produce what is called a Tsunami. A tsunami is a series of extremely wide water waves which are caused by the seismic waves orvolcanic eruptions which travel very fast and when reaching the coast they may achieve a maximum height of 30 meters. These humongous waves have caused over the past few years many personal and infrastructural damages in sea-shore places such as Japan or Indonesia. Sound waves are the “good” waves in this case because there are used modernly in the TWS’s (tsunami warning system) to warn the peoplefrom an incoming tsunami although is not able to avoid the tsunami because this is certainly impossible.

Tsunami are a permanent issue that humanity will have to control all live long, as its creation can’t be controlled by humans. Being this case as it is, modern scientists have been developing a new technology so the affected zone receives less damage than the expected. Tsunamis, besidesending people’s live, destroy properties and affect a whole community until the point it makes neutral its progression both economically and socially.


Sound waves are longitudinal progressive waves which are produced by the vibration of particles parallel to the motion of the wave. In this case, sound waves are vital to alert the warning center of an incoming wave. The TWS is a systemwhich is used by the countries which are prone to tsunamis to have time enough to alert the people and make them evacuate the homes saving how many properties they can and even get to seal their houses with other anti-tsunami systems as walls or channels. The TWS works in the following way. There is a special sensor in the bottom of the body of water which senses the pressure of the water when atsunami is passing through it. The pressure increases because of the higher amplitude of the wave in comparison to a normal wave having more weight per a specific area than normal. Then is when sound waves participate in the system because this sensor sends an acoustic message through sound waves to a hydrophone connected to a transmitter buoy which re transmits the data to the tsunami warningcenters where there is people attending the computers for any strange signal. In the first part of the process, the sensor is connected to a CPU which processes the information, to an acoustic receiver transducer which changes the information so that it can be sent using acoustic waves and to an acoustic release which is the mechanism which sends the waves to the buoy. This whole initial part weighsabout 350 kg and is called a ”tsunameter”. The acoustic waves sent move faster under the sea than they would be out in the air because of the medium, they also have a lower frequency. The second part of the process is the buoy and it has batteries for the efficient working, an acoustic transducer to change the acoustic waves into satellite data, GPS antenna and some electronic system to process theinformation. This buoy weighs about 3100kg so it’s not taken by the currents of the sea or of any other body of water in which is working. The information is the sent to a bi-directional communication and control satellite which then send this data to the tsunami warning system. It’s certain that this system uses sound waves just partially, not entirely as it’s involved in just one third of thewhole communication but even its just one third, it is the only way that the under-sea communication can work so it’s essential for the TWS. The whole system has two modes, the regular mode which sends signals each 15 minutes and the event mode which activates alone when there are “suspicions” of a tsunami and this sends signals each 15 seconds, obviously to be alert of what is happening in small...