Q 01/05

What does the Japanese word 'tsunami' literally mean?

A) Killer wave

B) Harbour wave

C) Sea dragon

D) Great wave

Answer · why

B) Harbour wave

Harbour wave joins tsu (harbour) and nami (wave). English adopted the word in 1896, after a tsunami devastated Japan's Sanriku coast.

Q 02/05

What fundamentally causes a tsunami?

A) Strong winds across the open sea

B) A sudden change in ocean currents

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

The displacement of a large volume of water is all it takes, so a landslide can raise a tsunami in a lake just as an undersea earthquake can in an oce...

Q 03/05

Which popular name for a tsunami do scientists avoid because the Moon and Sun play no part in causing one?

A) Tidal bore

B) Tidal wave

C) Rip tide

D) Spring tide

Answer · why

B) Tidal wave

Tidal wave suits the look of one, since a tsunami rushes ashore like a fast-rising tide and not a breaking wave, but real tides come from the pull of ...

Q 04/05

Which Athenian historian argued that earthquakes cause tsunamis?

A) Herodotus

B) Thucydides

C) Xenophon

D) Polybius

Answer · why

B) Thucydides

Thucydides was describing 426 BC, when the same run of earthquakes that flooded Greek coastal towns also made a Peloponnesian army abandon its invasio...

Q 05/05

In 479 BC, a tsunami drowned soldiers of which power as they besieged the Greek town of Potidaea?

A) Rome

B) Persia

C) Carthage

D) Macedon

Answer · why

B) Persia

Persia's soldiers set out across the seabed at an unusually low ebb, and Herodotus says the returning flood drowned those who could not swim.