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Different Types of Seismic Waves

P waves and S waves are two types of body waves that travel through the interior of the Earth. P waves are the fastest seismic waves and can travel through solid rock and fluids, while S waves are slower and can only travel through solid rock. There are also two types of surface waves: Love waves, which move side to side, and Rayleigh waves, which roll along the ground like ocean waves, moving the ground up and down and side to side in the direction of propagation.

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436 views

Different Types of Seismic Waves

P waves and S waves are two types of body waves that travel through the interior of the Earth. P waves are the fastest seismic waves and can travel through solid rock and fluids, while S waves are slower and can only travel through solid rock. There are also two types of surface waves: Love waves, which move side to side, and Rayleigh waves, which roll along the ground like ocean waves, moving the ground up and down and side to side in the direction of propagation.

Uploaded by

Vinz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Different Types Of Seismic Waves

What Is Seismology?
Seismology is the study of earthquakes and seismic waves that move through and around the
earth. A seismologist is a scientist who studies earthquakes and seismic waves.
BODY WAVES

Traveling through the interior of the earth, body waves arrive before the surface
waves emitted by an earthquake. These waves are of a higher frequency than surface
waves.

P WAVES

The first kind of body wave is the P wave or primary wave. This is the fastest kind
of seismic wave, and, consequently, the first to 'arrive' at a seismic station. The P
wave can move through solid rock and fluids, like water or the liquid layers of the
earth. It pushes and pulls the rock it moves through just like sound waves push and
pull the air.

S WAVES

The second type of body wave is the S wave or secondary wave, which is the second
wave you feel in an earthquake. An S wave is slower than a P wave and can only
move through solid rock, not through any liquid medium. It is this property of S
waves that led seismologists to conclude that the Earth's outer core is a liquid. S
waves move rock particles up and down, or side-to-side--perpindicular to the
direction that the wave is traveling in (the direction of wave propagation).

LOVE WAVES

The first kind of surface wave is called a Love wave, named after A.E.H. Love, a
British mathematician who worked out the mathematical model for this kind of wave
in 1911. It's the fastest surface wave and moves the ground from side-to-side.
Confined to the surface of the crust, Love waves produce entirely horizontal motion.

RAYLEIGH WAVES

The other kind of surface wave is the Rayleigh wave, named for John William Strutt,
Lord Rayleigh, who mathematically predicted the existence of this kind of wave in
1885. A Rayleigh wave rolls along the ground just like a wave rolls across a lake or
an ocean. Because it rolls, it moves the ground up and down, and side-to-side in the
same direction that the wave is moving. Most of the shaking felt from an earthquake
is due to the Rayleigh wave, which can be much larger than the other waves.

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