Hi Don,

If my memory is working correctly, when I took geology class they said the Love Wave turns in a counter-clockwise circular motion. The Rayleigh Wave turns in the clockwise circular motion. Both can occur simultaneously. But in comparison to p-waves and s-waves, the Love Wave and Rayleigh Waves are the ones that do the greatest amount of damage. They are tighter in motion and thus tend to "churn" things up.

I guess what I was trying to understand, was if a person knows these wave forms, then can one experience an earthquake and physically be able to identify the sequence and separate the various wave forms in feeling the physical motion.

Of course the primary wave is easy to identify in that it arrives first and is often accompanied by a whooshing sound, or as in my case in Loma Prieta I heard what sounded like a fast moving bus traveling down a street. But the street never has buses on it, so it was easy to know it was a primary earthquake wave. The S-Wave by physical means is also easy because it moves like a snake, back and forth or rolling. But these L and R Waves I suppose would be easy to miss due to the participants reaction to the quake experience and might not know how to differentiate these two from the S Wave.

So the next time I'm in an earthquake experience I am going to try and see if I can identify the L and R waves during the course of the event. I wonder how long I'll have to wait to be able to try this experiment.

I tried a few experiments with ear tones to see if I turned in any direction if it would change my perception of the sound, giving it more definition as to where the sound was coming from. I did this quite a number of times and I can say nothing changes. The sound remains the same as when it commenced, no matter what direction I was in. While we all know sound itself is a vibration, but I, like most EQ sensitives perceive the tone as a sound, however, it may well be a vibration that we perceive as sound, but is not actually a sound.

Experiments are something I don't think I'll ever become disinterested in. We can learn so much from just trying to sort out one thing from another and in earth sciences, there have been and always will be something new and enchanting to test.

Petra