Rama - Question on Tidal Wave - Spoilers

[Moonbat]

Hey,

I am reading Rama at the moment (the first one, although my book doesn't say rendezvous) and have just had the earthquake. Hub reported it to the rescue raft on the sea, then they see a tidal wave approaching them from further round the sea.

My question is, and I hope I'm wrong because for someone at dumb as me to spot a scientific inaccuracy in Clarke's work would destroy my faith in him, shouldn't that be a Tsunami rather than a tidal wave.

Although thinking about it, a Tsunami is when an earthquake shifts the land underwater and this results in a Tsunami wave, a tidal wave is just a large wave that has been assisted by the gravity of the moon/sun/whatever.

So was Arthur C Clarke wrong to call it a tidal wave, should it have been a Tsunami. Although I'm not yet sure where the quake came from, and I doubt the land beneath the sea was 'pushed up' as would be neceesary for a Tsunami. But there isn't a tide on Rama so how can there be a tidal wave?

Moonbat

 

[Ghost Of Gernsback]

Technically you are right, but the distinction between tidal wave and Tsunami used to be a lot more blured. Often a Tsunami was called a tidal wave in news reports and other places even though the event was caused by an earthquake rather than a tidal surge

 

[JoanDrake]

Google says:

Tsunami is a Japanese word with the English translation, "harbor wave."
Represented by two characters, the top character, "tsu," means harbor, while
the bottom character, "nami," means "wave." In the past, tsunamis were
sometimes referred to as "tidal waves" by the general public, and as "seismic
sea waves" by the scientific community. The term "tidal wave" is a misnomer;
although a tsunami's impact upon a coastline is dependent upon the tidal level
at the time a tsunami strikes, tsunamis are unrelated to the tides. Tides
result from the imbalanced, extraterrestrial, gravitational influences of the
moon, sun, and planets. The term "seismic sea wave" is also misleading.
"Seismic" implies an earthquake-related generation mechanism, but a tsunami can
also be caused by a nonseismic event, such as a landslide or meteorite impact

So he was following standard usage. If that usage is inaccurate it's not his fault.

Unless he was referring to the giant "rogue" waves, huge sea waves. These do not, AFAIK, act like the above when they approach land (in fact they rarely last long enough to come to land at all). These were thought a sea tale in 1972. Clarke would have known the difference if it was but would have almost certainly followed then standard usage so as not to confuse the general public and lose suspension of disbelief

 

[steve12553]

When I read Rendezvous with Rama, a number of years ago, I had never heard the term Tsunami and I doubt seriously that most of the general public in the Western Civilization (as it was then called) had either. That may have had a lot to do with his choice of terms also.