Fundamentals of Geophysics

Abstract

Choosing an intermediate‐level geophysics text is always problematic: What should we teach students after they have had introductory courses in geology, math, and physics, but little else? Fundamentals of Geophysics is aimed specifically at these intermediate‐level students, and the author's stated approach is to construct a text “using abundant diagrams, a simplified mathematical treatment, and equations in which the student can follow each derivation step‐by‐step.” Moreover, for Lowrie, the Earth is round, not flat—the “fundamentals of geophysics” here are the essential properties of our Earth the planet, rather than useful techniques for finding oil and minerals. Thus this book is comparable in both level and approach to C. M. R. Fowler's The Solid Earth (Cambridge University Press, 1990).