Tsunamis form by earthquakes below the ocean floor creating waves that radiate in all directions away from where the earthquake was. The focus is the point inside the earth where the earthquake started and the point on the surface above the focus is called the epicenter.
Example of a recent tsunami: On 5 March 2021, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake occurred in the Kermadec-Tonga, it made a minor tsunami that affected Norfolk Island and New Zealand. Major evacuations were carried out along the New Zealand coast in Northland, Auckland, Bay of Plenty, and Gisborne following tsunami warnings.
House designs: To withstand tsunamis they use reinforced concrete or steel-frame structures, they design structures to let the water flow through so it doesn’t damage the house.
Earthquakes and tsunamis blog:
Method: first we made the frame out of Lego using a staggered technique to make it stronger, then we made the roof using the same technique but we also put pins between the blocks to make it even stronger. We also taped it to make it waterproof and we added a sunroof so that you could see the person inside.
It survived 25 cm of water level (the highest level) and the person inside didn’t get wet. Unfortunately, we don’t have a photo of the results.
I think our house did well because we made legs that held it in the sand and we also used the sandbags that we made to help stop the water. Also, we waterproofed our house with tape so the person inside didn’t get a drop of water on him.
The experiment went really well our house survived really well from the tsunami, next time I think we should change the size of the container that we put the houses in so we can really test the houses properly.