More than 400 years ago William Gilbert said, “The Earth itself is a great magnet.” Today, we know that it is also a great magnetic tape recorder. This work is a comprehensive, up-to-date textbook on extracting and using rock and paleomagnetic data in archaeological, geological, and geophysical applications. Designed for students and professionals with knowledge of college level physics and some background in earth sciences, it describes both the theory and the practice of paleomagnetism, covering topics such as the basics of magnetism, geomagnetic fields, how rocks become magnetized, and the various ways of analyzing the magnetism of rocks. The book uses the companion PmagPy software package. An appendix contains a brief introduction to Python, an easy-to-use, cross-platform, and most important, free programming environment in which PmagPy programs are written.
Lisa Tauxe is Professor of Geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
"This book by Lisa Tauxe and others is a marvelous tool for education and research in Paleomagnetism. Many students in the U.S. and around the world will welcome this publication, which was previously only available via the Internet. Professor Tauxe has performed a service for teaching and research that is utterly unique."—Neil D. Opdyke, University of Florida
512 pp.7 x 10Illus: 267 color illustrations, 25 tables
9780520260313$59.95|£50.00Paper
Mar 2010