Hi All,

Of all the geophysical terms, I think the "Love Wave" has the most potential to capture the imagination. One can imagine a pair of seismologists out doing field work, when surprisingly a 5.5 magnitude earthquake strikes right under their feet and they capture the sensation of the "Love Wave." Though, capturing the "Love Wave" on Valentine's Day is no more likely than any other day during the year. How unfortunate.

However, for some, we must ask, what is the "Love Wave?" "The first kind of surface wave is called a Love wave, named after A.E.H. Love, a British mathematician who worked out the mathematical model for this kind of wave in 1911. It's the fastest surface wave and moves the ground from side-to-side."

Last night I watched a new series about disaster rescues and the first episode in the series just happened to be on the Loma Prieta Earthquake. It was odd how reliving the event through news footage and dramatizations brought back many images I remembered, yet though time had forgotten how painful. On the Cypress Structure in Oakland, a woman named Petra her two small children and her girlfriend; were driving home to Richmond when they became entombed. Petra and her girlfriend died, but her two children survived. The little girl had major head injuries and endured more than a dozen surgeries afterward. Her younger brother had his leg amputated from the knee down and had more than 40 surgeries. But today they are fine.

Meanwhile over in San Francisco Sara Cox was being rescued after her apartment building had collapsed. As she laid in the rubble waiting to be rescued, she had a lot of debris on top of her and not enough breath to yell out. So she found a pipe and made random noises with it when banging it to capture the attention and was eventually successful. Oh, I thought how good it would have been for everyone, all around the bay buried, in rubble to have had a whistle.

So on this Valentine's Day, in the celebration of love, the one you can share with everyone which goes around the Earth and in times of crisis makes everyone a hero, I say, pucker up and blow, I'm talking about a whistle. Get one and put it on your key chain.

Meanwhile, you can visit the attached link and learn all about the "Love Wave" and other seismic waves.

Petra

• MTU Seismic Waves