Introduction to Seismology, Fall 2005

Peter Shearer, x42260, pshearer@ucsd.edu

We meet M,W,F from 9 to 9:50 in the IGPP Munk Lab Conference Room.

Website for class at http://mahi.ucsd.edu/shearer/227A/

Text: Shearer, P.M., Introduction to Seismology (henceforth ITS), Cambridge University Press, 1999. Copies are in IGPP Reading Room and SIO Library.
Typos in book

Supplemental exercises (PDF)

Supplemental online material may be accessed through UCSD reserves (http://reserves.ucsd.edu/, click on "electronic Reserves and Reserves Pages" and then enter 227a in Quick Search box and click search). The supplemental material currently includes Chapter 2 of Malvern's continuum mechanics book and part of "Dynamic Earth" by Davies that discusses Earth's interior structure.

Greek alphabet (PDF)
Introduction (PDF)
Who are all these people? (PDF)
Photo page (PDF)
Smith and Sandwell abstract about deviatoric stress on SAF (PDF)
Himalayan Seismic Hazard (PDF)
Seismology Debates (PDF)
Miaki Ishii surface wave and normal mode notes

Where We Are

(F 9/23) Introduction. Skipped Chapter 1 (assigned reading), went through stress section in Chapter 2. (M 9/26) through equation 2.21 (W 9/28) thru eq. 3.16 (F 9/30) finished chapter 3 (M 10/3) to middle page 42 (W 10/5) discussed homework, went to p. 47 (F 10/7) finished chapter 4 (M 10/10) to p. 72 (W 10/12) to p. 76 (F 10/14) thru p. 82, presented some of Guy's tomography models (M 10/17) finished chapter 5, showed some relocation results for southern Calif. (W 10/19) through section 6.2 (F 10/21) through section 6.3.1 (M 10/24) through start of section 6.6 (W 10/26) discussed results of velocity model inversion homework, finished attenuation section in Chapter 6, presented some Q observations, started Chapter 7 (F 10/28) through p. 124 (M 10/31) through p. 130 (W 11/2) finished 7.4 (skipping rest of Chap. 7), started Chapter 9 (Chapter 8 skipped for now) (F 11/4) finished 9.2 (M 11/7) through 9.3 (W 11/9) up to section 9.5 (M 11/14) up to section 9.73 (W 11/16) presented seminar on stress drop calculations for southern California (F 11/18) Jesse Lawrence lecture (M 11/21) Miaki Ishii lecture (W 11/23) no class (M 11/28) finished Miaki's notes, finished Chapter 9.

Assignments

  1. Website search (due Wed., 9/29) Also, please read ITS Chapter 1 and come prepared to ask a question on Monday about something (anything!) in the chapter.
  2. ITS 2.2, 2.6 (a to e only), Supplemental Exercises (see above PDF), Chapter 2: 1 and 2 (due Mon., 10/3).
  3. (due Mon. 10/10) A choice of 3 non-computer problems or one computer problem: (ITS 3.2, 3.5, Supplemental exercise (see above PDF) Chapter 3, number 1) or (ITS 3.6)
  4. (due Mon. 10/17) A choice of 4 non-computer problems or one computer problem: (ITS 4.1, 4.3, 4.9, Supplemental exercise Chapter 4, number 1) or (ITS 4.7, Please note that the PREM model and Fortan, C and Matlab versions of LAYERXT (and a Fortran Earth flattening subroutine) may be obtained at igpphome.ucsd.edu/~shearer/Files/ in the 227A directory, or via anonymous ftp to mahi.ucsd.edu in the pub/227A/ directory) EXTRA CREDIT: ITS 4.2 or Suppl. Chap 4, #2
  5. ITS 5.1 (due Mon. 10/24) You may want to use this PDF file of plot.
  6. ITS 6.2, 6.7 (due 10/31) By "relative" amplitude in 6.2, I mean you can assume that the amplitude at 30 degrees in 1 and give the amplitudes at 60 and 90 degrees relative to this.
  7. ITS 6.6 or ITS 7.1 (due 11/7). For 6.6, you may assume Qkappa = infinity and alpha/beta =sqrt(3) throughout the mantle. The easiest way to do this will be to compute t* for both PcP and ScS. Give the attenuated amplitude of the PcP and ScS rays, assuming that the ray has an initial amplitude of one. Ignore geometrical spreading and any reflection or transmission coefficients. For 7.1, note that in part (c) A(t) = 1 for 2 < t < 18. For (d), use v(t) from part (a).
  8. ITS 9.1, 9.4, 9.6, 9.7, 9.8 (due 11/16)
  9. EXTRA CREDIT OPTIONS (only if you want to!), can be turned in up to Friday, the last day of class. Pick one of the following:
    5.2
    8.1a,b (note that e8.3 should be -tan^-1(b/a). Note also that the phase shift for the reflected wave (phi_SupSup) must be -theta to be consistent with the sign convention for the phase shift used in (8.7) and (8.9)
    8.2
    10.1
  10. (due Wed. 12/7) Research reports due. Some suggested topics are listed in the "Seismology Debates" PDF (see link above), but you are free to choose anything (seismology related!) that interests you. Your report should be about 1500 words long and include references. You can either give me a hard copy or send me a PDF file. I will be gone the week of Dec. 5-9 but you can leave it in my mailbox.