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Which travels slower p waves or surface waves?
surface waves because p waves and s waves are way faster so here is how it goes from fastest to slowest: is p wave and then s wave and then surface waves
What type of earthquake wave travels faster?
P-waves(primary waves) travel faster than S-waves(secondary waves)
Are P-waves and S-waves transverse or longitudinal waves?
P-waves are longitudinal and S-waves are transverse waves.
How fast are the p waves compared to s waves?
P waves arrive a couple seconds to a few minutes before s waves.
A seismograph station can determine its distance from an earthquake's epicenter by .?
P-waves and S-waves are released by an earthquake at the same time and travel out from the epicentre in all directions. However P-waves travel faster than S-waves so the further away from the earthquake's epicentre the greater the lead the P-waves have on the S-waves. Observation of the seismogram trace at the seismometer station will allow the scientists to find the P-wave and S-wave arrival times and measure the difference between them. As the P-waves are faster they always arrive first (hence their name - primary wave). The greater the difference between the time that the P-waves and S-waves first arrive (i.e. the greater the lead the P-waves have), the further the distance to the epicentre. They are able to use the time difference along with an estimate of the speed of the P-waves and S-waves to find the distance from the station to the earthquakes epicentre. For more information on this please see the related question.
