Tsunamis and Barge Canals

Russell’s velocity formula was at the center of the controversy over the existence of the solitary wave; but today the topic is rarely mentioned. It is an immediate corollary of modern bifurcation theory; and it is fundamental to modelling waves in deep water. A tsunami 60 cm high in an ocean 4 km deep is 377 km long, travels with a velocity of 713 km/hr, and carries a transverse energy density of 2 × 10⁹ joules/meter, yet the maximum speed of the surface current is only 2.97 cm/s.