Abstract
The crust of the earth has often been defined in two different ways. The silicic crust is the part of the solid earth above the Mohorovičič discontinuity, which separates it from the mantle. The existence of this discontinuity has been established by seismic refractions and reflections, which show an abrupt increase in seismic wave speeds to a value which appears to be the same all over the world. The silicic crust is about 5 km. thick under oceans and about 35 km thick under continents.
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References
A third definition of the crust has been given by BENIOFF, see end of Sect. 4.
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Ewing, M., Press, F. (1956). Structure of the earth’s crust. In: Bartels, J. (eds) Geophysik I / Geophysics I. Handbuch der Physik / Encyclopedia of Physics, vol 10 / 47. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45855-2_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45855-2_9
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