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These waves can travel through any type of material, including fluids, and can travel nearly 1.7 times faster than the S waves. In air, they take the form of sound waves, hence they travel at the speed of sound. Typical speeds are 330 m/s in air, 1450 m/s in water and about 5000 m/s in granite.
An earthquake is caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Tectonic plates are always slowly moving, but they can get stuck at their edges due to friction.When the stress on the edge of a tectonic plate overcomes the friction, there is an earthquake that releases energy in waves that travel through the Earth's crust and cause the shaking that is felt.
The original "body-wave magnitude" – mB or m B (uppercase "B") – was developed by Gutenberg (1945b, 1945c) and Gutenberg & Richter (1956) [2] to overcome the distance and magnitude limitations of the M L scale inherent in the use of surface waves. mB is based on the P- and S-waves, measured over a longer period, and does not saturate until ...
A P wave (primary wave or pressure wave) is one of the two main types of elastic body waves, called seismic waves in seismology. P waves travel faster than other seismic waves and hence are the first signal from an earthquake to arrive at any affected location or at a seismograph. P waves may be transmitted through gases, liquids, or solids.
Because they travel along the surface of the Earth, their energy decays less rapidly than body waves (1/distance 2 vs. 1/distance 3), and thus the shaking caused by surface waves is generally stronger than that of body waves, and the primary surface waves are often thus the largest signals on earthquake seismograms. Surface waves are strongly ...
[3] [1] S-waves, in contrast, are constrained to solids and reveal information about the Earth's rigidity and internal composition, including the discovery of the outer core's liquid state since they cannot pass through it. [3] The study of these waves' travel times and reflections offers a reconstructive view of the Earth's layered velocity ...
An earthquake – also called a quake, tremor, or temblor – is the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they cannot be felt, to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, damage ...
Ground motion is produced by seismic waves that are generated by sudden slip on a fault or sudden pressure at the explosive source and travel through the Earth and along its surface. [1] This can be due to natural events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or human activities, such as the detonation of nuclear weapons. There are two ...