Seismology and Magnetics - Geology 437
Professor: Steve Sheriff

Fall 2002 Problem sets:

• warm-up problems
• Refraction and water table Problem
• Another refraction problem
• Magnetic (VGP) problems
• More magnetic problems
• A relative velocity vector problem

Fall 2001 Problem sets:

• getting started
• refraction problems #1
• Butte-Challis blind zone problem
• magnetic field problems
• paleomagetic problems
• Seismology & quakes
• request for bids

Fall 2000 problem sets:

• September 6: Here's a few problems to get you started thinking about this course.
• September 18: Problem set #2 - fun with spherical trig and relative velocity vectors; due 9/25.
• September 25: Problem Set #3 - VGP, declination and inclination; due 10/2/00.
• October 23: Problem set #4 - T-Delta diagrams and locating epicenters; due 10/30/00.
• November 1 Problem set #5 - 2D refraction seismology; due 11/8/00.
• November 27 Problem set #6 - Moment, mass and radius; due 12/4.

Fall 1999 Problem Sets:

• Problem set #1 - just to get you started thinking about what we will be doing in this course.
• Problem set #2 - a couple simple distance and Euler pole problems.
• Problem set #3 - Virtual geomagnetic poles and Earth's main-field geometry.
• Problem set #4 - Applied paleomagnetism (here's the data in Excel's format).
• Problem set #5 - Two parts to this one, a T-delta problem, and an epicenter problem.
• Problem Set #6 - A mix of ancient analysis, mass, moment, and seismic refraction.
• Problem Set #7 - Seismic refraction and crustal structure - western Montana. Here are the data in an Excel spreadsheet.
• Problem set #8 - Isostacy and gravity modeling.

Fall 1998 Problem Sets:

• Exercise #1 - Relative velocity vectors and finding Euler poles from spreading rates.
• Exercise #2 - Some questions concerning apparent pole positions, Euler poles, virtual geomagnetic poles (VGP), and the like.
• Exercise #3 - Locating an epicenter from 3D data and constructing T-delta curves.
• Exercise #4 - Here's a two-layer seismic refraction problem that let's you design a refraction experiment in East Missoula.
• Exercise #5 - This time it is a mix of ancient analysis, mass, moment, and seismic refraction.
• Exercise #6 - Regional/residual separation, gravity modeling, and isostacy.

Free Recreation (old exams) from Geol 437 - Introduction to Geophysics.

On the earlier exams, some hand-drawn figures are missing; given your notes you can figure out the questions or you can ask me about them.

Free Spreadsheet exercises from Computation and Computer Methods in Geology

• First, here's how to trick Excel into plotting data on a stereonet as a worksheet and pdf file.
  • Exercise one covers relative versus absolute addresses and graphing equations.
  • Exercise two introduces Excel's array functions for transposing, multiplying and inverting matrices.
  • Exercise three uses the array functions for solving simultaneous equations and fitting lines to linear data.
  • Exercise four demonstrates Excel's LINEST() function for least squares.
  • Exercise five requires importing ASCII data, sorting, MEDIAN(), and AVERAGE.

Auxiliary exercises

• Erosion and landscape evolution

So far the most convenient and expedient way to distribute the information seems to be to provide the material in Adobe's .PDF format. Thus these exercises and notes are provided as .PDF files and you need Adobe's free Acrobat Reader installed in your browser to view them.

If your browser is not currently set up to read and print such files, download Acrobat Reader from Adobe's web page, close your browser (preferably version 4.0 or greater of MS Internet Explorer or Netscape), install the reader, restart your browser, click on one of my links pointing to a set of notes or problems, and Acrobat Reader should pop up with the .PDF file.