The Solid Earth
An Introduction to Global Geophysics

A fully up-dated edition of this acclaimed undergraduate geophysics textbook.

C. M. R. Fowler (Author)

9780521893077, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 20 December 2004

728 pages, 384 b/w illus. 31 colour illus. 31 tables 143 exercises
25 x 19.5 x 4.5 cm, 1.975 kg

'To summarise, Mary Fowler's book is an outstanding work that I strongly recommend to each library and that I advise each geology student to read. As picturesque, informative and scientifically satisfying as the earlier version of the book … .' Journal of Sedimentary Research

The Solid Earth is a general introduction to the study of the physics of the solid Earth, including the workings of both the Earth's surface and its deep interior. The emphasis throughout is on basic physical principles rather than instrumentation or data handling. The second edition of this acclaimed textbook has been revised to bring the content fully up-to-date and to reflect the most recent advances in geophysical research. It is designed for undergraduates on introductory geophysics courses who have a general background in the physical sciences, including introductory calculus. It can also be used as a reference book for graduate students and other researchers in geology and geophysics. Each chapter ends with exercises of various degrees of complexity, for which solutions are available to instructors from www.cambridge.org/9780521893077. The book contains an extensive glossary of geological and physical terms, as well as appendices that develop more advanced mathematical topics.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Sources
1. Introduction
2. Tectonics on a sphere: the geometry of plate tectonics
3. Past plate motions
4. Seismology: measuring the interior
5. Gravity
6. Geochronology
7. Heat
8. The deep interior of the Earth
9. The oceanic lithosphere: ridges, transforms, trenches and oceanic islands
10. The continental lithosphere
A1. Scalars, vector and differential operators
A2. Theory of elasticity and elastic waves
A3. Geometry of ray paths and inversion of earthquakes body wave time-distance curves
A4. The least-squares method
A5. The error function
A6. Units and symbols
A7. Numerical data
A8. IASP91 Earth model
A9. Preliminary reference Earth model isotropic version - PREM
Glossary
Index.

Subject Areas: Geophysics [PHVG]