Thursday, September 28, 2006

 

New Readings Archive

I just posted the new readings online, which were scanned this morning. (I haven't obtained the readings they were scanning for Darcy, so I decided to go ahead and post a new archive now, and Darcy can make substitutions later in the weeks we talk about "Erupt" or "Melt")

These are .zip archives which might work better than .tar. I posted them as two separate archives; download "Keepers.zip" first. Still, please use Acrobat as your reader, since other readers had trouble with the previous archive.

Also: To help understand the basics of linear elastic fracture mechanics (e.g. to supplement the readings of Atkinson, Costin), I found the following web site to be OK. We don't want to get too bogged down in J-integrals, other somewhat esoteric concepts, but it's important to be exposed to the basics.
http://www.sv.vt.edu/classes/MSE2094_NoteBook/97ClassProj/anal/yue/energy.html

ftp topaz.pmc.ucsc.edu
user anon
ftp4u
cd pub
get Keepers.zip
get Supplements.zip

There are some juicy readings in Supplements, for those who enjoy doing midnight browsing of scientific papers.

Monday, September 25, 2006

 

Rock Smashing Readings for October 2

Note that class time is 9:00-noon
Those who want, we can have a lunch after class (not necessarily academic)

Atkinson et al. 1987 ->anybody
Costin et al. 1987 -> Plesko
Grady and Kipp 1987 -> Lissa
Collins et al MAPS 2004 -> Shawn

(optional; Weibull 1951)

Saturday, September 23, 2006

 

Readings

The readings need to be viewed with Acrobat -- they are not corrupt.
Anyway, I will be posting a new tarball this week with some additional and some deleted articles.

Reading for this Monday September 25 is Greenberg et al. Icarus 1978, and I'll do a simple lecture on some aspects of constitutive models and basic elastic theory.

Then we get down to nuts & bolts for a while on rock strength and failure mechanics. Readings for Monday October 2 are, in preferred order:
Atkinson 1987
Costin 1987
(optional) Weibull 1951
Grady and Kipp 1987
Collins et al. 2004

Some of Atkinson and Costin may be a bit beyond your familiarity but do the best you can. Those who cannot attend October 2 need to do these readings. Also, if you have zero background in the basics of stress-strain relationships, and terminology such as viscosity and strain rate, get thee to a textbook such as Turcotte and Schubert since we will be discussing this in class.

October 9 is cancelled, so the next class after that will be Friday October 20, for which we shall begin the topic of shocks and equations of state ("Melosh land").

After that we have the toolkit to start taking meaningful looks at the topical aspects of this course: volcanos, craters, experimental results, flying microbes...

Thursday, September 21, 2006

 

Go Get the Readings

ftp topaz.pmc.ucsc.edu
user anon
ftp4u
cd pub
get 290Readings.tar

It is a big file (100Mb). Unpack it (tar -xf 290Readings.tar, or if you're lucky, double click) and you'll see two directories, "Keepers" and "Supplements." These are all PDFs.

The Supplements were readings I had considered for the class but decided, nehh. The Keepers are the readings you shall be required to read. Some of the readings are pretty easy, so it is not as daunting as it looks. And quite frankly, if you can't read 4 papers a week you're in the wrong business. Actually you should be able to scan about 4 papers an hour and really read 4 papers a day to be competitive... so you'll thank me later.

It's short notice to print them all out by tomorrow, so don't bother. Tomorrow we'll have a logistical meeting, and then Monday morning we'll have our first reading discussion. Tomorrow I'll assign the first readings. Be sure to have all the Keepers printed out by mid-October, when we dig back into the class after the conferences.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

 

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Monday, September 11, 2006

 

Welcome to the class

Here is your first homework. You will be graded on this.

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1. Please figure out what it takes to subscribe to this blog, and then do so. Send me an email if you have trouble. Make sure you are checking posts daily by the first day of classes (Thursday Sept. 21) and that you know how to submit a post.
====

I will make announcements on this blog instead of saying blah-blah-blah in class. (I do reserve the right to say blah-blah-de-blah however.) We shall use this forum to discuss the readings, even if only to point out things you want to talk about in the seminar. Here are a couple of short example posts:

"Regarding figure 3b; can we discuss how the logarithmic graph shows the vapor/melt phase boundary as approximately linear?"

"Check out the picture of the Opportunity rover well inside of Victoria crater!
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-opportunity/images/MERB_930_br2.jpg
Looks like they're going to make it into the big pit."

Each of you is required to contribute a couple of useful or interesting posts during the course of the seminar. They can be much longer than the above. That is the beauty of the internet, you can ramble on for pages and we won't mind. Heck start your own blog about how Lange and Ahrens (1982) Brittle Fragmentation of Gabbro changed your life.

One graded requirement for this course is for you to "adopt" a number of the papers that we read. This should be a familiar process to any of you who have taken seminar classes; we take turns leading the discussion. The papers you plan to be leading, those would be good ones to post about.

This is not a seminar "about" the readings however. The readings have been chosen to be about the theme of high strain rate planetary mechanics. So don't worry about departing from the readings, either in class or in your posts to this blog.

Each time we will meet to give careful review to 2-3 papers. Each paper is assigned to one of you, so your job is to come to class jazzed enough about your paper that you can keep the discussion moving. If the discussion comes to a dead end, you are not doing your job!

As recompense, discussion leaders of the day will be awarded whatever fancy beverage of their choosing at the coffee cart, triple mocha piled high with whip cream or what have you. Just try to avoid delirium.

We are really going to get into these readings. Two hours (9-11) will be devoted to going over the past week's readings, and the last hour (until noon) will be devoted to previewing the upcoming readings. Don't worry, there will be a long break in there somewhere. So, each paper will get discussed twice, once in preview (led by me) and once after we've read it (led by you).

Everybody participates! I urge you all to skim the readings before my preview -- indeed skim all of them once you print them out -- so that you benefit from the half hour preview. This is especially true for those of you leading the discussion the following week.

I expect you to keep the readings in a binder and bring them all with you to class each week.

Logistics will be discussed 9-10 Friday Sept. 22. Meet in D236. The nominal class time are Mondays 9-12, in D236.

Impact craters are, in my view, the sin qua non of high strain rate planetary processes, and thus are given special coverage in this class. But high strain rate processes also include landslides and flows, volcanic eruptions, pseudotachylites, larger scale collisions, mass wasting, and channel formation. If you have a favorite topic or better yet a chapter or paper you'd like to have discussed, please send it to me, preferably now rather than later.

About 20 readings of various kinds (papers and book chapters) constitute the primary reading. There are about 10 auxiliary papers which I encourage you all to read. These will be linked to in a message to follow later this week.

================
Logistics and Schedule:
================

There are three back to back conferences at the start of the quarter! One in Santa Cruz (contact me if interested in asteroids and comets), one in Pasadena (DPS), and one at NASA Ames (LCROSS site selection). So there will be no class between and including October 4 (Wednesday) and October 16 (Monday).

How to salvage this train wreck? Make lemonade! First and foremost, I recommend all students taking this class try to attend the LCROSS meeting at NASA Ames, http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lcross2006/home.shtml. There is free registration but you need to register; don't just "show up". The workshop involves a probe that is going to crash into a permanently shadowed crater on the Moon in 2008, to find out if there is water. The asteroids meeting is also free to registered scientists, including students, and is highly recommended (since I am organizing it!), although the topic is not high strain rate processes. See http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/recon2006/recon2006.3rd.shtml

The assigned class meeting time is 9am-noon Mondays. Too bad if that sucks. Show up Friday 9/22 at 9 if you want to arm wrestle about it. All meetings will be in D236.

I think the following is the schedule. Tell me of any obvious errors before the first meeting Friday.

Fri Sep 22: 9-10 am (initial meeting to discuss readings & logistics)
Mon Sep 25: 9-noon (full class meeting)
Mon Oct 2: 9-noon (full class meeting)

Wed Oct 4-6: Workshop on Spacecraft Reconnaissance of Asteroid and Comet Interiors, Santa Cruz
Mon Oct 9-13: Division of Planetary Sciences of the AAS, Pasadena
Mon Oct 16: LCROSS Site Selection, Mountain View

Fri Oct 20: 9-noon (special full class meeting)
Mon Oct 23: 9-noon (nominal from here on)
Mon Oct 30: 9-noon
Mon Nov 6: 9-noon
Mon Nov 13: 9-noon
Mon Nov 20: 9-noon
Mon Nov 27: 9-noon
Fri Dec 1: 9-11 (final academic meeting)
Mon Dec 5: afternoon cook-out / bowling

Erik

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