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Geophysical Fields

GEOS 602
This course is no longer taught. This page documents the last time it was taught.

Spring 2010
Tu-Th 1:30-3:00, GI Auditorium

Instructor: Jeff Freymueller

x7286 Elvey 413B jfreymueller@alaska.edu

Last Updated: January 20, 2010

Course Topics

Grading Scheme

Grades will be based on your percentage of the total possible score. The breaks between A, B, C, etc are NOT at 90%, 80%, etc, but at lower percentages to account for the difficulty level of the homework. The breakpoints are based on the history of past classes in addition to this year's students.

Homework

Final Project

Detailed Schedule

Each lecture title is a link to the powerpoint file for that lecture.

Day

Date

Lecture Topic

Thu

Jan 21

Gravity 1: What is a field?, Mathematical properties of scalar and vector fields, Potential and field, Newtonian Attraction;
Homework: PROBLEM SET 1 assigned, due Tue February 2.

Thu

Jan 26

NO CLASS

Thu

Jan 28

Gravity 2: Measurements of gravity, Potential of an arbitrary 3D body, Potential of a sphere

Tue

Feb 2

Gravity 3: MacCullough's formula, Earth's gravity field;
Homework: PROBLEM SET 2 assigned, due Tue February 9.

Thu

Feb 4

Gravity 4: The Geoid, Shape of the Earth, Introduction to orthogonal functions

Tue

Feb 9

Gravity 5: Spherical Harmonics, Application to the global gravity field;
Homework: PROBLEM SET 3 assigned, due Tue February 16.

Thu

Feb 11

Gravity 6: Satellite Measurements of the Gravity Field and gravity change

Tue

Feb 16

Gravity 7: More gravity change and spherical harmonics, Tides;
Homework: PROBLEM SET 4 assigned, due Tue February 23.

Thu

Feb 18

Gravity 8: Gravity surveys, Gravity Anomalies, Examples of gravity anomalies from the real world.

Tue

Feb 23

Gravity 9: Modeling gravity anomalies, Attraction of special mass distributions, Excess mass, Green's equivalent layer, Sinusoidally-varying topography;
Homework: PROBLEM SET 5 assigned, due Thu March 4.

Thu

Feb 25

NO CLASS

Tue

Mar 2

Gravity 10: Compensation, Isostasy, Isostatic Anomalies, Gravity and lithospheric flexure
Homework: PROBLEM SET 6 assigned, due Tue March 23.

Thu

Mar 4

Gravity 11: Fourier methods, Upward and downward continuation.

Tue

Mar 9

SPRING BREAK!!

Thu

Mar 11

SPRING BREAK!!

Tue

Mar 16

Gravity 12: Fourier methods, Application of Fourier methods to compensation

Thu

Mar 18

Magnetics 1: Electricity and magnetism, Electric and magnetic fields, Magnetic field of the Earth, IGRF

Tue

Mar 23

Magnetics 2: The dipole and non-dipole fields, Magnetization, Magnetic anomalies
Homework: PROBLEM SET 7 assigned, due Tue March 30.

Thu

Mar 25

Magnetics 3: Magnetization, Modeling magnetic anomalies, Total field anomaly

Tue

Mar 30

Magnetics 4: Reduction to the pole, Examples of magnetic anomaly maps, How rocks get their magnetization, Paleomagnetism, Magnetic reversals and history of Earth's magnetic field
Homework: PROBLEM SET 8 assigned, due Thu April 8.

Thu

Apr 1

Magnetics 5: Paleoinclination and declination, Spherical trig and statistics of directions, Paleomagnetism and plate tectonics

Tue

Apr 6

Initial Presentation of Final Project Topics

Thu

Apr 8

Heat Flow 1: Heat transfer, Fourier's Law, Heat flow in the Earth
Homework: PROBLEM SET 9 assigned, due Thu April 15.

Tue

Apr 13

Heat Flow 2: Heat sources within the Earth and the geothermal gradient, Conduction

Thu

Apr 15

Heat Flow 3: Conduction on a sphere, 1D time-dependent conduction
Homework: PROBLEM SET 10 assigned, due Thu April 22. It's the last one!

Tue

Apr 20

Heat Flow 4: Heating or cooling of a semi-infinite half-space, Cooling of oceanic crust

Thu

Apr 22

Heat Flow 5: Advection

Tue

Apr 27

Progress Reports on Final Projects

Thu

Apr 29

Heat Flow 6: The Stefan problem and phase changes

Tue

Apr 27

Heat Flow 7: Thermal stresses, mantle adiabats

Thu

Apr 29

Heat Flow 8: Convection

END OF CLASSES (but final Project due Fri May 14)


Dr. Jeffrey T. Freymueller
Professor of Geophysics
Geophysical Institute
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320

jfreymueller@alaska.edu
Phone 907-474-7286
Fax 907-474-7290
Office 413B Elvey