A2.16
(i) Sketch the rays in a small region near the relevant boundary produced by reflection and refraction of a -wave incident (a) from the mantle on the core-mantle boundary, (b) from the outer core on the inner-core boundary, and (c) from the mantle on the Earth's surface. [In each case, the region should be sufficiently small that the boundary appears to be planar.]
Describe the ray paths denoted by and .
Sketch the travel-time curves for and paths from a surface source.
(ii) From the surface of a flat Earth, an explosive source emits -waves downwards into a stratified sequence of homogeneous horizontal elastic layers of thicknesses and -wave speeds . A line of seismometers on the surface records the travel times of the various arrivals as a function of the distance from the source. Calculate the travel times, and , of the direct wave and the wave that reflects exactly once at the bottom of layer 1 .
Show that the travel time for the head wave that refracts in layer is given by
Sketch the travel-time curves for and on a single diagram and show that is tangent to .
Explain how the and can be constructed from the travel times of first arrivals provided that each head wave is the first arrival for some range of .