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Very fast and nicely packed item delivery - just as they promissed me in the email.
Many topics that appeared in literature but not included in ordinary books are explained in a unified style by the authors. This is a very good book. Well organized and in detail.
I could go back to it as a reference to gain a deeper understanding. I used that book in a course the next semester on earthquake seismology and a lightbulb came on. However, I had a good professor and TA and took extensive notes to get by. As they say, 'Quantitative Seismology' is the "bible" of the subject and so should be in your library. Do yourself a favor if you have to use this book, and you're not a calc/physics guru, by obtaining the Stein/Wysession book. As a first year graduate student, this was the required text in my very first course in seismology.
I had no clue what a Green's function was. I now understood better what Aki and Richards were talking about. Boy was I intimidated. It is a lot more user friendly and application oriented. However, it is more of a reference for experienced users. I had only taken calculus up through ODE's so much of the material in this book was difficult for me to comprehend.
Fortunately we only used chapters 2,3,4 and 5.
The preface in 1st edition begins: "Seismology has matured as a quantitative science. Its not an introductory textbook, you need a formal background in physics and mathematics. and several specialized journals recorded this progress.", with this book you'll not obtain only the essentials of this progress; also the essentials of an enjoyable, mature and complete science.For reference the table of contents:1.- Introduction2.- Basic Theorems in Dynamic Elasticity3.- Representation of Seismic Sources4.- Elastic Waves from a point of Dislocation Source5.- Plane Waves in Homogeneous Media and their Reflection and Transmission at a Plane Boundary6.- Reflection and Refraction of Spherical Waves; Lamb's Problem7.- Surface Waves in a Vertically Heterogeneous Medium8.- Free Oscillations of the Earth9.- Body Waves in Media with depth-dependent properties10.- The Seismic Source: Kinematics11.- The Seismic Source: Dynamics12.- Principles of Seismometry Many descriptions in seismology requires a complete understanding of the theory that support the seismological phenomena. Quantitative Seismology shows you all the fundamental concepts and prepare you for more advanced developments.
As a former applied math student, I had a difficult time dealing with distribution-valued differential equations without seeing some justification for making sense out of the Green's functions. After writing my first review and getting some more experience, I decided to give this book a higher rating. Aki and Richards is good to use with Peter Shearer's "Introduction to Seismology" and for an even MORE mathematical treatment than Aki and Richards, one could buy Jose Pujol's "Elastic Wave Propagation and Generation in Seismology." This text is not as comprehensive as Aki and Richards, but Pujol derives and proves nearly everything, leaving nothing unsupported.In short, this book is almost a necessity for every seismologist, but don't use it as a first book. I STRONGLY recommend getting Aki and Richards WITH "Foundations of Applied Mathematics" by Greenberg. Among the seismology texts out there, few are as comprehensive in theory as Aki and Richards. They don't shy away from deriving or proving some important claims, which I like.
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