Fundamentals of Geophysics


Product Description
This second edition of Fundamentals of Geophysics has been completely revised and updated, and is the ideal geophysics textbook for undergraduate students of geoscience with an introductory level of knowledge in physics and mathematics. It gives a comprehensive treatment of the fundamental principles of each major branch of geophysics, and presents geophysics within the wider context of plate tectonics, geodynamics and planetary science. Basic principles are explained with the aid of numerous figures and step-by-step mathematical treatments, and important geophysical results are illustrated with examples from the scientific literature. Text-boxes are used for auxiliary explanations and to handle topics of interest for more advanced students. This new edition also includes review questions at the end of each chapter to help assess the reader's understanding of the topics covered and quantitative exercises for more thorough evaluation. Solutions to the exercises and electronic copies of the figures are available at www.cambridge.org/9780521859028.Fundamentals of Geophysics Review
I tried to use this book as an "updated" textbook for an introductory course on Physics of the Earth (second year geophysics major) I had to taught. Since my area of research is paleomagnetism and rock magnetism the name of William Lowrie was sort of a guarantee that the book would be good. However, in the middle of the term I had to switch back to the "great classics", namely Stacey's and Garland's books. There are several problems with this book, firstly most of the formulae are presented out of the blues without a comprehensive deduction. That is not the most serious problem though, I also found several mistakes in the 2000 edition (I do not know if further editions took care of these problems). Some of these mistakes are pretty serious. As an example: he states that the international formula for the gravity normal to the Earth's ellipsoid derives directly from MacCullah's formula. That is not correct since in MacCullah's formula the centrifugal term coming from Earth's rotation is not considered!!!! There are also lots of minor mistakes related to missing terms in several formulae and derivatives. I did not touch the chapters related to geomagnetism and rock magnetism but I gather they should be the best in the whole book (I really hope so!!!!) since that is precisely William Lowrie's field of research. However I would not recommend this book at all.Most of the consumer Reviews tell that the "Fundamentals of Geophysics" are high quality item. You can read each testimony from consumers to find out cons and pros from Fundamentals of Geophysics ...

No comments:
Post a Comment