A reference to earthquakes or surface waves produced with acoustic or sonic energy for geophysical explorations of minerals, oil, etc.: "New seismic methods have become lucrative for oil companies."

"The seismic method was observed by a group of physicists who noticed that whenever an earthquake took place in Alaska then oil production in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin significantly increased because of the great waves of energy that moved at hundreds of meters a second were breaking apart rock formations that contained oil."