Since the earliest days of human existence, the clash of thunder and trembling of the hills has struck fear into the hearts of seasoned warriors and tribal villagers alike. Great gods, demi-gods, and heroes were created to explain the awesome, mysterious, and incomprehensibly powerful forces of Nature in a feeble attempt to make sense of the world around them. To our advanced scientific minds today, these explanations seem childish and ridiculous; however, the power to flatten thousands of...
This book is an introduction to wave dynamics as they apply to earthquakes, among the scariest, most unpredictable, and deadliest natural phenomena on Earth. Since studying seismic activity is essentially a study of wave dynamics, this text starts with a discussion of types and representations, including wave-generation mechanics, superposition, and spectral analysis. Simple harmonic motion is used to analyze the mechanisms of wave propagation, and driven and damped systems are used to model the...
