Earth's Magnetism in the Age of Sail

Earth's Magnetism in the Age of Sail PDF Author: A. R. T. Jonkers
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801871320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jonkers explores these early efforts both for what they reveal about the history of science and navigation and as a unique record of the actual changes in the Earth's magnetic field. The result, a combination of science and history, will appeal to a broad audience of specialists as well as general readers."--BOOK JACKET.

Earth's Magnetism in the Age of Sail

Earth's Magnetism in the Age of Sail PDF Author: A. R. T. Jonkers
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801871320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jonkers explores these early efforts both for what they reveal about the history of science and navigation and as a unique record of the actual changes in the Earth's magnetic field. The result, a combination of science and history, will appeal to a broad audience of specialists as well as general readers."--BOOK JACKET.

The Earth's Magnetism

The Earth's Magnetism PDF Author: Roberto Lanza
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540279792
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
Initially, this book reviews the general characteristics of the Earth’s magnetic field and the magnetic properties of minerals, and then proceeds to introduce the multifold applications of geomagnetism in earth sciences. The authors analyze the contribution of geomagnetism both in more general geological fields, such as tectonics and geodynamics, and in applied ones, such as prospecting and pollution. Primarily, the book is aimed at undergraduate geology or geophysics students. It is geared to provide them with a general overview of geomagnetism, allowing them to understand what contributions this branch of science can offer in the more special sectors of earth sciences. Graduate students and geology researchers will also benefit from it, as it enables them to gain a clear and concise image of the techniques which can be applied in their areas of specialization.

Zero Degrees

Zero Degrees PDF Author: Charles W. J. Withers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674978951
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
Space and time on earth are regulated by the prime meridian, 0°, which is, by convention, based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. But the meridian’s location in southeast London is not a simple legacy of Britain’s imperial past. Before the nineteenth century, more than twenty-five different prime meridians were in use around the world, including Paris, Beijing, Greenwich, Washington, and the location traditional in Europe since Ptolemy, the Canary Islands. Charles Withers explains how the choice of Greenwich to mark 0° longitude solved complex problems of global measurement that had engaged geographers, astronomers, and mariners since ancient times. Withers guides readers through the navigation and astronomy associated with diverse meridians and explains the problems that these cartographic lines both solved and created. He shows that as science and commerce became more global and as railway and telegraph networks tied the world closer together, the multiplicity of prime meridians led to ever greater confusion in the coordination of time and the geographical division of space. After a series of international scientific meetings, notably the 1884 International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, Greenwich emerged as the most pragmatic choice for a global prime meridian, though not unanimously or without acrimony. Even after 1884, other prime meridians remained in use for decades. As Zero Degrees shows, geographies of the prime meridian are a testament to the power of maps, the challenges of accurate measurement on a global scale, and the role of scientific authority in creating the modern world.

Sailing School

Sailing School PDF Author: Margaret E. Schotte
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421429543
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hands-on science in the Age of Exploration. Winner of the John Lyman Book Award in Naval and Maritime Science and Technology by the North American Society for Oceanic History and the Leo Gershoy Prize by the American Historical Association Throughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial navigation. They developed schools, textbooks, and instruments to teach the new mathematical techniques to sailors. As these experts debated the value of theory and practice, memory and mathematics, they created hybrid models that would have a lasting impact on applied science. In Sailing School, a richly illustrated comparative study of this transformative period, Margaret E. Schotte charts more than two hundred years of navigational history as she investigates how mariners solved the challenges of navigating beyond sight of land. She begins by outlining the influential sixteenth-century Iberian model for training and certifying nautical practitioners. She takes us into a Dutch bookshop stocked with maritime manuals and a French trigonometry lesson devoted to the idea that "navigation is nothing more than a right triangle." The story culminates at the close of the eighteenth century with a young British naval officer who managed to keep his damaged vessel afloat for two long months, thanks largely to lessons he learned as a keen student. This is the first study to trace the importance, for the navigator's art, of the world of print. Schotte interrogates a wide variety of archival records from six countries, including hundreds of published textbooks and never-before-studied manuscripts crafted by practitioners themselves. Ultimately, Sailing School helps us to rethink the relationship among maritime history, the Scientific Revolution, and the rise of print culture during a period of unparalleled innovation and global expansion.

Our Magnetic Earth

Our Magnetic Earth PDF Author: Ronald T. Merrill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226520536
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
For the general public, magnetism often seems more the province of new age quacks, movie mad scientists, and grade-school teachers than an area of actual, ongoing scientific inquiry. But as Ronald T. Merrill reveals in Our Magnetic Earth, geomagnetism really is an enduring, vibrant area of science, one that offers answers to some of the biggest questions about our planet’s past—and maybe even its future. In a clear and careful fashion, he lays out the physics of geomagnetism and magnetic fields, then goes on to explain how Earth’s magnetic field provides crucial evidence for our understanding of continental drift and plate tectonics; how and why animals, ranging from bacteria to mammals, sense and use the magnetic field; how changes in climate over eons can be studied through variations in the magnetic field in rocks; and much more. Throughout, Merrill peppers his scientific account with bizarre anecdotes and fascinating details, from levitating pizzas to Moon missions to blackmailing KGB agents—a reminder that real science can at times be stranger, and more amusing, than fiction. A winning primer for anyone who has ever struggled with a compass or admired a ragged V of migrating geese, Our Magnetic Earth demonstrates that education and entertainment need not be polar opposites.

Synergia

Synergia PDF Author: Néstor Herrán
Publisher: Editorial CSIC - CSIC Press
ISBN: 9788400085780
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Get Book Here

Book Description


Proxies in Late Cenozoic Paleoceanography

Proxies in Late Cenozoic Paleoceanography PDF Author: C. Hillaire-Marcel
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080525040
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 863

Get Book Here

Book Description
The present volume is the first in a series of two books dedicated to the paleoceanography of the Late Cenozoic ocean. The need for an updated synthesis on paleoceanographic science is urgent, owing to the huge and very diversified progress made in this domain during the last decade. In addition, no comprehensive monography still exists in this domain. This is quite incomprehensible in view of the contribution of paleoceanographic research to our present understanding of the dynamics of the climate-ocean system. The focus on the Late Cenozoic ocean responds to two constraints. Firstly, most quantitative methods, notably those based on micropaleontological approaches, cannot be used back in time beyond a few million years at most. Secondly, the last few million years, with their strong climate oscillations, show specific high frequency changes of the ocean with a relatively reduced influcence of tectonics. The first volume addresses quantitative methodologies to reconstruct the dynamics of the ocean andthe second, major aspects of the ocean system (thermohaline circulation, carbon cycle, productivity, sea level etc.) and will also present regional synthesis about the paleoceanography of major the oceanic basins. In both cases, the focus is the "open ocean leaving aside nearshore processes that depend too much onlocal conditions. In this first volume, we have gathered up-to-date methodologies for the measurement and quantitative interpretation of tracers and proxies in deep sea sediments that allow reconstruction of a few key past-properties of the ocean( temperature, salinity, sea-ice cover, seasonal gradients, pH, ventilation, oceanic currents, thermohaline circulation, and paleoproductivity). Chapters encompass physical methods (conventional grain-size studies, tomodensitometry, magnetic and mineralogical properties), most current biological proxies (planktic and benthic foraminifers, deep sea corals, diatoms, coccoliths, dinocysts and biomarkers) and key geochemical tracers (trace elements, stable isotopes, radiogenic isotopes, and U-series). Contributors to the book and members of the review panel are among the best scientists in their specialty. They represent major European and North American laboratories and thus provide a priori guarantees to the quality and updat of the entire book. Scientists and graduate students in paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, climate modeling, and undergraduate and graduate students in marine geology represent the target audience. This volume should be of interest for scientists involved in several international programs, such as those linked to the IPCC (IODP – Integrated Ocean Drilling Program; PAGES – Past Global Changes; IMAGES – Marine Global Changes; PMIP: Paleoclimate Intercomparison Project; several IGCP projects etc.), That is, all programs that require access to time series illustrating changes in the climate-ocean system. - Presents updated techniques and methods in paleoceanography - Reviews the state-of-the-art interpretation of proxies used for quantitative reconstruction of the climate-ocean system - Acts as a supplement for undergraduate and graduate courses in paleoceanography and marine geology

Literature and Cartography

Literature and Cartography PDF Author: Anders Engberg-Pedersen
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262036746
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Get Book Here

Book Description
The relationship of texts and maps, and the mappability of literature, examined from Homer to Houellebecq. Literary authors have frequently called on elements of cartography to ground fictional space, to visualize sites, and to help readers get their bearings in the imaginative world of the text. Today, the convergence of digital mapping and globalization has spurred a cartographic turn in literature. This book gathers leading scholars to consider the relationship of literature and cartography. Generously illustrated with full-color maps and visualizations, it offers the first systematic overview of an emerging approach to the study of literature. The literary map is not merely an illustrative guide but represents a set of relations and tensions that raise questions about representation, fiction, and space. Is literature even mappable? In exploring the cartographic components of literature, the contributors have not only brought literary theory to bear on the map but have also enriched the vocabulary and perspectives of literary studies with cartographic terms. After establishing the theoretical and methodological terrain, they trace important developments in the history of literary cartography, considering topics that include Homer and Joyce, Goethe and the representation of nature, and African cartographies. Finally, they consider cartographic genres that reveal the broader connections between texts and maps, discussing literary map genres in American literature and the coexistence of image and text in early maps. When cartographic aspirations outstripped factual knowledge, mapmakers turned to textual fictions. Contributors Jean-Marc Besse, Bruno Bosteels, Patrick M. Bray, Martin Brückner, Tom Conley, Jörg Dünne, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, John K. Noyes, Ricardo Padrón, Barbara Piatti, Simone Pinet, Clara Rowland, Oliver Simons, Robert Stockhammer, Dominic Thomas, Burkhardt Wolf

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai PDF Author: Tonio Andrade
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082485277X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a core region of international trade for millennia, but during the long seventeenth century (1550 to 1700), the velocity and scale of commerce increased dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks and maritime polities; they competed and cooperated with one another and with powerful political and economic units, such as the Manchu Qing, Tokugawa Japan, the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, and the Dutch East India Company. Maritime East Asia was a contested and contradictory place, subject to multiple legal, political, and religious jurisdictions, and a dizzying diversity of cultures and ethnicities, with dozens of major languages and countless dialects. Informal networks based on kinship ties or patron-client relations coexisted uneasily with formal governmental structures and bureaucratized merchant organizations. Subsistence-based trade and plunder by destitute fishermen complemented the grand dreams of sea-lords, profit-maximizing entrepreneurs, and imperial contenders. Despite their shifting identities, East Asia’s mariners sought to anchor their activities to stable legitimacies and diplomatic traditions found outside the system, but outsiders, even those armed with the latest military technology, could never fully impose their values or plans on these often mercurial agents. With its multilateral perspective of a world in flux, this volume offers fresh, wide-ranging narratives of the “rise of the West” or “the Great Divergence.” European mariners, who have often been considered catalysts of globalization, were certainly not the most important actors in East and Southeast Asia. China’s maritime traders carried more in volume and value than any other nation, and the China Seas were key to forging the connections of early globalization—as significant as the Atlantic World and the Indian Ocean basin. Today, as a resurgent China begins to assert its status as a maritime power, it is important to understand the deep history of maritime East Asia.

Earth System Geophysics

Earth System Geophysics PDF Author: Steve R. Dickman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119627958
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 933

Get Book Here

Book Description
Earth System Geophysics Geophysics helps us understand how our planet works by connecting complex real-world phenomena with fundamental physical laws. It provides the tools, both conceptual and quantitative, for understanding interactions between the different components of the Earth System: the solid earth, oceans, atmosphere, and biosphere. Earth System Geophysics is a comprehensive textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in the Earth sciences that uses Earth System Science as the framework for learning about geophysics. About this volume: Presents convection as the underlying paradigm that drives the Earth System Uses math and physics in an accessible way to understand processes on and within the Earth Frames natural processes and events in terms of cause and effect Builds gradually from basic to advanced concepts and equations Develops quantitative skills through applied examples Heavily referenced, allowing students to pursue topics in greater depth Relevant for students from across the physical sciences and engineering The American Geophysical Union promotes discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity. Its publications disseminate scientific knowledge and provide resources for researchers, students, and professionals.