Exploring our Evolving Planet: An Introduction to Geophysics

Exploring Our Evolving Planet provides students with a clear, exciting, and intuition-based presentation of the complex and interconnected structure and evolution of Earth. To engage today's students, the authors make provocative connections, such as Snell's law in seismology and its applications to fiber optics, the rainbow, and tsunami propagation. Similarly, a discussion of phase diagrams incorporates freeze-dried food and liquefied natural gas. A variety of data acquisition systems, including seismometers, magnetometers, mass spectrometers, X-ray diffraction, diamond anvils, satellite altimeters, GPS, space missions, are discussed briefly with explanatory diagrams.