Geological Sciences 420:

Instructor: Peter van Keken, 4502 CC Little,
Time and location: MWF 12-1, 2520 CC Little
Text (required): Lowry, Fundamentals of Geophysics, Cambridge University Press, 1997 (approx. $45)
Office hour: by appointment
Pre-requisites: Calculus (Math 116 or equivalent).

Syllabus (PDF)

Outlines (pdf)

Outlines will be added as the semester progresses.

• Outline 1
• Outline 2
• Outline 3
• Outline 4
  Additional handout on exploration geophysics
• Outline 5
• Outline 6
• Outline 7
• Outline 8
• Outline 9
• Outline 10
• Outline 11
• Outline 12

Problem sets (pdf)

• 1 (due Friday 9/17/04)
• 2 (due Monday 9/27/04)
• 3 (due Wednesday 10/6/04)
  Map of gravity anomaly (needed for problem set 3)
• 4 (due Wednesday 10/13/04)
  
• 5 (due Monday 10/25/04)
  
• 6 (due Wednesday 11/3/04)
  Selected answers
  
• 7 (due Monday 11/15/04)
  Figure 7.1
  Figure 7.2
• 8 (due Wednesday 11/24/04 noon)
  Figure 8
• 9 (due some time before 12/19/04) This problem set is worth 20 points
  
  Material needed for part I:
  Primer on Focal mechanisms by Vince Cronin (Baylor)
  First motions I (rescaled to fit stereonet)
  First motions II (rescaled to fit stereonet)
  Stereonet
  
  Material needed for part II:
  
  Wysession's movies (WUSTL):
  • movie 1: Homogeneous mantle, EQ at 600 km
  • movie 2: PREM Earth, EQ at 600 km
  • movie 3: PREM Earth, EQ at 300 km
  • movie 4: PREM Earth, EQ at 20 km
  
  Visualizations by Van Keken, Komatitsch and Tromp (TKvK)
  • Snapshot of P and S, 17 minutes after Vanuatu EQ
  • Bolivia 1994 (670 km depth): 10 fps 4 fps
  • Vanuatu 1999 (15 km depth): 10 fps 4 fps

Review sheets for exams (pdf)

• Exam 1 (10/15/04)
• Exam 2 (12/10/04)

Extras

• Discussion of the use of geoid and gravity (ppt; 28 Mbyte)
• Panorama of field camp
• Pixtra viewer (for Windows) that you may want to use for viewing the panorama
• Students' summary of western Geology
• Application of the half space cooling and plate models (ppt)
• Example of triplication of travel time curve
• Earthquakes (big ones) (ppt)
• Traveling wave on string constructed by normal mode summation
• Seismic tomography (ppt)
• Applications of paleomagnetism (ppt)

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