IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Status report: seismology, gravity and longitude & latitude

This was the first of three articles in the IGY Bulletins that will present the status of activity in each IGY area. Recall that from my post of Nov. 21, 2020, these areas are:

1. World Days and communications
2. meteorology
3. geomagnetism
4. aurora and airglow
5. ionosphere
6. solar activity
7. cosmic rays
8. longitudes and latitudes
9. glaciology
10. oceanography
11. rockets and satellites
12. seismology
13. gravity
14. nuclear radiation

For the three areas covered in this IGY Bulletin article, what were some of the IGY goals? I'll number these areas according to the list above.

8. Longitudes and latitudes objectives included:

• precise determination of latitudes and longitudes, to within a few feet
• determination of the shape (figure) of the Earth
• measurement of irregularities in Earth's rotation 

12. Seismology objectives included determination of:

• Antarctic crustal structure
• Antarctic ice thickness
• layers and their thicknesses in the ocean crust

13. Gravity objectives included:

• augmenting the global network of gravity measurements, especially in the Southern Hemisphere and polar regions
• better determination of the solid Earth's response to the tides
• enhanced measurement of gravity at sea

I assume we will see results of these pursuits in future issues of the IGY Bulletin, to be summarized here in future posts.

In my geophysics courses at Franklin & Marshall College, I taught all three of the topics that are the subject of this Bulletin article. Geophysicists often distinguishes between "pure" and "applied" geophysics. Pure geophysics (aka physics of the Earth, or solid Earth geophysics) is more or less the physics of the Earth in its natural state, including earthquake seismology, geomagnetism, and the gravity field of the Earth. Applied geophysics involves surveys (e.g., seismic, gravity, magnetic, electrical), using natural or artificial energy sources, to locate things in the Earth's subsurface of economic or cultural interest such as hydrocarbons, ores, and archaeological structures. 

As our geosciences curriculum at F&M changed over the years, I taught separate courses on solid Earth geophysics and applied geophysics, and courses that somewhat combined these topics, I can count 9 or 10 textbooks on my bookshelf that I used for these courses. I probably changed them more than was necessary, but I was constantly trying to find that "better" (also in print, up to date, and not too expensive) guide for undergraduates who typically had more interest in geology than geophysics, and often came in with only modest quantitative skills. 

Below are the covers of my favorite three of the textbooks. A common thread is that they are all explicitly written for geologists, without too much calculus, and more compatible with the students I taught.