Ge 108: Applications of Physics to the Earth Sciences

Instructor: Mike Brown, mbrown@caltech.edu, 395-8423, 168 S. Mudd.

TA: Margarita Marinova, mmm@caltech.edu, 395-6960, 160 S. Mudd.

Meets: 10:30-noon T, Th, S. Mudd classroom

Many of your problem sets will involve using MATLAB to obtain simple numerical solutions. Caltech has a nice site license so you can download it for free.
Click here to learn how to get MATLAB running on your computer.

Each week we will cover 2 lectures in approximately this order
Lecture 1 1st order differential equations
Lecture 2 Applications of 1st order DEs. Look here for the MATLAB program to numerically solve the foxes and the rabbits problem.
Lecture 3 Heat flow.
Lecture 4 Applications of diffusion.
Lecture 5 Radiation.
Lecture 6 Radiative transfer.
Lecture 7 Applications of radiative transfer.
Lecture 8 Numerical methods
Lecture 9 Gravitation
Lecture 10 Gravitational potentials
Lecture 11 Oscillations
Lecture 12 Forced oscillations
Lecture 13 Coupled oscillations
Lecture 14 Waves
Lecture 15 Wave propagation

Problem sets are due at 9am on Tuesday mornings
Problem set 1. Download numeric.m (MATLAB)
Problem set 2. Download diffuse.m (MATLAB) and diffuse2D.m (MATLAB)
Problem set 3.
Problem set 4. Download f.m
Problem set 5
Problem set 6. Fun with springs.m
Problem set 7. Surf for waves.m here
Problem set 8.

Schedule of classes

Week 1	30 Sept	First order differential equations
Week 2	7 Oct	Heat flow and diffusion
Week 3	14 Oct	Radiation (NO CLASS WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY!)
Week 4	21 Oct	Radiative transfer and applications
Week 5	28 Oct	Gravitation and gravitational potentials
Week 6	4 Nov	MIDTERM DUE TUESDAY AT 9AM . NO HOMEWORK DUE. Oscillations
Week 7	11 Nov	Coupled oscillations and waves
Week 8	18 Nov	Wave propagation (NO CLASS THURSDAY)
Week 9	25 Nov	(THANKSGIVING; NO CLASS WEDNESDAY OR THURSDAY)
Week 10	2 Dec	(NO CLASS TUESDAY)
Finals week	8 Dec	FINAL DUE FRIDAY 12 DEC AT 5PM