In geophysics, wave propagation in elastic media is a crucial subject. In this context, seismology has made significant progress as a result of numerous advances, among these stands out the advancement of numerical methods such as the finite-difference one. Usually, seismic wave propagation in elastic media results in complex systems of partial differential equations, whose solutions cannot be obtained in an analytical way, especially when dealing with heterogeneous media. In consequence, there exists a necessity to implement numerical methods. However, the available information about the construction of a numerical solution of these equations is not as explicit as it should be. Our main goal is to provide pedagogical instructions for undergraduate students who want to improve their computational skills as well as their knowledge of the subject. The last through current teaching methods involving challenging problems and transversal tools. Particularly, we provide a brief description of the equations and a detailed description of the numerical solution of the seismic wave equation. Furthermore, we model two different seismic explosive sources in both homogeneous and heterogeneous media as an illustrative example. In the results, we include velocity maps showing wave propagation in the x–z plane, and the z-velocity as a function of time measured in a series of detectors distributed in the numerical domain.

在地球物理学中，弹性介质中的波传播是一个至关重要的课题。在此背景下，地震学取得了重大进展，其中包括有限差分法等数值方法的进步。通常，地震波在弹性介质中的传播会导致偏微分方程组的复杂系统，其解无法通过解析的方式获得，尤其是在处理非均质介质时。因此，有必要实施数值方法。然而，关于构建这些方程的数值解的可用信息并不像应有的那样明确。我们的主要目标是为想要提高计算技能和学科知识的本科生提供教学指导。最后通过当前的教学方法涉及具有挑战性的问题和横向工具。特别地，我们提供了方程的简要描述和地震波动方程数值解的详细描述。此外，我们在均质和非均质介质中对两个不同的地震爆炸源进行建模作为说明性示例。在结果中，我们包括速度图，显示波在x – z平面，以及在分布在数值域中的一系列探测器中测量的作为时间函数的z速度。