What is the relationship between S and P waves?
P waves travel fastest and are the first to arrive from the earthquake. In S or shear waves, rock oscillates perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation. In rock, S waves generally travel about 60% the speed of P waves, and the S wave always arrives after the P wave.
What do P waves and S waves have in common?
P (Primary) and S (Secondary) Waves are Body Waves often associated with Seismic Waves as in Earthquakes. Both Body Waves and Surfaces waves comprise an earthquake, but the body waves arrive first.
Which is more dangerous P or S waves?
S waves are more dangerous than P waves because they have greater amplitude and produce vertical and horizontal motion of the ground surface. The slowest waves, surface waves, arrive last. They travel only along the surface of the Earth. There are two types of surface waves: Love and Rayleigh waves.
What is the characteristic of 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.
What are the two types of body waves?
Body waves are of two types: Primary waves (also called P-waves, or pressure waves) and Secondary waves (S-waves, or shear waves). P-waves are compression waves. They can propagate in solid or liquid material. S-waves are shear waves.
What are the 3 types of waves in a earthquake?
There are three basic types of seismic waves – P-waves, S-waves and surface waves. P-waves and S-waves are sometimes collectively called body waves.
What is P and S waves?
P-waves are compression waves that apply a force in the direction of propagation. On the other hand, S-waves are shear waves, which means that the motion of the medium is perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the wave. The energy is thus less easily transmitted through the medium, and S-waves are slower.
How do you read P waves and S waves?
The P wave will be the first wiggle that is bigger than the rest of the little ones (the microseisms). Because P waves are the fastest seismic waves, they will usually be the first ones that your seismograph records. The next set of seismic waves on your seismogram will be the S waves.
What is the two main types of seismic waves?
There are two broad classes of seismic waves: body waves and surface waves. Body waves travel within the body of Earth. They include P, or primary, waves and S, or secondary, waves.
How does a Rayleigh wave move?
Rayleigh Waves—surface waves that move in an elliptical motion, producing both a vertical and horizontal component of motion in the direction of wave propagation. Particle motion consists of elliptical motions (generally retrograde elliptical) in the vertical plane and parallel to the direction of propagation.
What kind of movement is created in a Rayleigh wave?
A Rayleigh wave is a seismic surface wave causing the ground to shake in an elliptical motion, with no transverse, or perpendicular, motion.
What is the movement of primary waves?
Seismic P waves are also called compressional or longitudinal waves, they compress and expand (oscillate) the ground back and forth in the direction of travel, like sound waves that move back and forth as the waves travel from source to receiver. P wave is the fastest wave.
What are R waves and L waves?
Seismic Waves: The main seismic wave types are Compressional (P), Shear (S), Rayleigh (R) and Love (L) waves. Although surface wave motion penetrates to significant depth in the Earth, these types of waves do not propagate directly through the Earth’s interior.