Q 01/05

The word 'tsunami' is Japanese. What does it literally mean?

A) Killer wave

B) Harbour wave

C) Sea dragon

D) Great wave

Answer · why

B) Harbour wave

Fishermen would sail out, notice nothing unusual at sea, and return to find their harbour village destroyed.

Q 02/05

What fundamentally causes a tsunami?

A) Strong offshore winds

B) The gravitational pull of the Moon

C) The displacement of a large volume of water

D) Rapid melting of sea ice

Answer · why

C) The displacement of a large volume of water

Earthquakes are the usual trigger, but landslides, eruptions, glacier calving and even meteorites can do it.

Q 03/05

Why do scientists dislike the term 'tidal wave' for a tsunami?

A) Tsunamis are not technically waves

B) The term is trademarked

C) It only applies to lakes

D) Tsunamis have nothing to do with tides

Answer · why

D) Tsunamis have nothing to do with tides

The name stuck because an arriving tsunami often looks like an extraordinarily high tidal bore rather than a breaking wave.

Q 04/05

Which ancient Greek historian first argued that tsunamis were caused by undersea earthquakes?

A) Herodotus

B) Thucydides

C) Xenophon

D) Polybius

Answer · why

B) Thucydides

He made the case in his History of the Peloponnesian War around 426 BC; real understanding did not arrive until the 20th century.

Q 05/05

The oldest human record of a tsunami, from 479 BC, comes from which Greek colony?

A) Syracuse

B) Potidaea

C) Massalia

D) Byzantium

Answer · why

B) Potidaea

The wave may have saved the colony from an invasion by the Achaemenid Persians.