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Video: Intel ISEF – Kissing tsunamis goodbye

They say prevention is sometimes better than a cure. But what happens when preventative measures are taking too long to implement, like the early warning systems for tsunamis?

Well, then you work on a cure. And that’s exactly what Boyd Kane, ISEF finalist from Bishops in Cape Town, South Africa did when he started studying tsunamis.

Kane’s project employs an underwater trench, dug some distance in from the shore to take the bite out of a tsunami’s energy. To quote an extract from his project: “Currently, the methods used to minimise the loss that a tsunami could cause are, for differing reasons, not effective enough. Breakwaters are also often not strong enough to combat a tsunami.

“This project has found a way in which tsunamis energy could, in theory, be drastically reduced,” the paper continues, “The hypothesis for the investigation was that if a long, deep trench is dug in the seabed in the direct path of a tsunami then most of the wave’s energy will be lost after it passes over the trench.”

Kane’s proof of concept involves a wave tank with a malleable bed, in which he created 972 waves of varying power and studied the effects of different trench lengths. As predicted, the longer the trench the more energy it sapped out of the wave as it passed over the top. Dig a big trench in tsunami-prone areas and you could mitigate incoming waves.

So what did you do for humanity today?

[Image: Shutterstock]

You can watch the video here or below…

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