Earth & Space Sciences

This course examines how magmatism has shaped Earth, how magma forms and evolves physically and chemically to make igneous rocks, and what controls its subterranean emplacement or volcanic eruption.

This course provides foundational knowledge, understanding and practical skills aligned to complex challenges of the modern era from an Earth Science perspective. It covers geoscientific data collection, analysis and visualization, hazard analysis, and spatial mapping.

This course covers the basics in geophysics, particularly the following three specific sub-areas: solid earth physics, fluid earth physics, and space physics. 

(1) Solid Earth Physics: Selected topics from seismology, volcanology, and plate tectonics for the purpose of learning basic knowledge on the structure and dynamics of the solid Earth. 

(2) Fluid Earth (atmosphere and ocean) Physics: Selected topics from meteorology, global warming, and physical climatology for the purpose of learning basic knowledge on climate change and related global environment problems. 

(3) Space Physics: Selected topics from solar physics, interplanetary physics, magnetospheric physics, and upper atmospheric physics for the purpose of learning basic knowledge on the electromagnetic environment of the Sun, the Earth, and planets.

This course focuses on the rise of the earth and life sciences as independent, professional disciplines during the modern period, along with ways in which these sciences were developed in industry to produce new technologies. During this period, practitioners in these fields managed to establish their sciences as indispensable to the industrialized nation state, invested with both economic and social capital and productive of significant results, both theoretical and practical. The course traces the development of the earth and life sciences from the Enlightenment period to the development of genetic biotechnologies.

This is a companion course to History of Modern Physical Sciences.

This course examines physical, chemical and biological processes and their co-dependencies in the global ocean system.

This course examines how and why volcanoes erupt and how to communicate this to diverse audiences. It explores local volcanoes on field trips, and  volcanoes in North Island NZ/Aotearoa and Iceland via virtual field trips. During the labs you will use microscopes, cooking, and explosions to describe volcanic deposits, understand lava viscosity, and explain volcanic hazards. 

This course examines nature and origin of structures produced by deformation in the Earth’s crust, and material properties of rocks that affect the way in which they respond, as well as practical geometric methods associated with deriving and representing the three dimensional form of structures commonly encountered in geological practice, and synthesis of tectonic settings. It also covers large-scale geometry and processes of plate tectonics, and topics in global geophysics linked to current observation and plate tectonic theory.

The course introduces the students to the concept of sustainable energy and the main renewable energy resources. Those covered in the course are geothermal, hydro, wind, solar, and marine energy, the emphasis being on geothermal energy. The current and potential use of these energy resources for producing electricity and space heating are discussed, with application to the UK where appropriate. The focus is on current and future use of these resources, as well as on quantitative aspects and understanding some of the relevant physics. The module covers the basic concepts of energy science, including conservation of energy, basic thermodynamic concepts, energy efficiency, and related topics presented at an elementary (easily understood) level. An emphasis is on the ideal combination between geothermal energy (which is a steady source – always there) and other but non-steady renewable sources (e.g., solar and wind energy).

This course examines field techniques applied to metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary rocks, and rock deformation structures.