Seismology and plate tectonics / Сейсмология и тектоника плит

This book grew from a course taught with Dan McKenzie to final year physicists in Cambridge. Our task was to provide undergraduates who already possessed a good grounding in physics and mathematical methods with a broad exposure to geophysics in just 24 lectures. Fortunately it is possible to bring a student in geophysics to the forefront of the subject quite quickly: within 24 lectures it is possible to explain research techniques that are in current use and were used to make discoveries that _ are now less than 20 years old, which is impossible in most other branches of physics. In order to provide the course with structure, and to introduce an essential quantitative element that would allow us to examine it with numerical problems as well as purely descriptive accounts, we decided to concentrate on the development of seismology since the introduction of the World Wide Standardised Seismic Network in about 1960 and its role in the development of plate tectonic theory, the major advance in earth science this century.  <...>