Course Details
Professor: Seth Stein (seth@earth.northwestern.edu)
TAs: Leah Salditch (leah@earth.northwestern.edu)
James Neely (james@earth.northwestern.edu)
Structure: This online version is being used because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s an experiment, being built in real time. Not everything is ready, so things won’t be perfect and will evolve. We’ll all have to be flexible in this tough time. Still, we can have a good time and learn a lot. If you encounter difficulties, let us know and we’ll work on them with you.
Lectures are prerecorded as powerpoints with audio and video, so you should download them, watch them, and upload your answers to lecture questions before class. Contact us if you have difficulties.
We’ll have Zoom meetings at the scheduled time (12:00 – 1:20 central time) Mondays and Wednesdays for discussion of lecture material, lecture questions and homework due that day, class questions about aspects of the material, and homework help. Labs will also be held over Zoom. We expect you to attend and participate in both class and your assigned lab section.
Homework and lecture questions are due on the assigned date by the beginning of class. No credit will be given for late work without prior approval from instructor or TA.
You may work (presumably remotely) with other students on the homework problems and class questions, as long as at the beginning of each assignment you list whom you worked with and on which parts. Computer problems can be done by writing programs or using Matlab, Excel or equivalent. Please turn in everything on Canvas as a single PDF (which can include images/screenshots), and spreadsheets/computer programs where appropriate
Despite the hassle, let’s bear in mind that this is a neat topic and is fun learning!
Lectures:
Each topic has downloadable power points (some parts a and b) and a pdf
Topic 1, Introduction, Earth’s shape, size, and mass: 202L1a, 202L1b, 202L1.pdf
Topic 2, Studying Earth with seismic waves: 202L2a, 202L2b, 202L2.pdf
Topic 3, Earth’s composition: 202L3a, 202L3b, 202L3.pdf
Topic 4, Radiometric age dating: 202L4, 202L4.pdf
Topic 5, Looking beyond Earth, origin of elements: 202L5, 202L5.pdf
Topic 6, Formation of the solar system: 202L6, 202L6.pdf
Topic 7, Formation of the planets: 202L7a, 202L7b, 202L7.pdf
Topic 8, Heat and temperature in the Earth: 202L8a, 202L8b, 202L8.pd
Grading:
Problem sets, lecture questions, class questions, lab problems