Week 4: Diffusion
Overview:-
How does a batholith cool? How can we measure temperatures from the end of the last ice age? Why is Earth’s lithosphere thin enough that it can break up into plates? Why does the altitude of a mid-ocean ridge decrease as the square root of the age of the ocean floor? All these and many more are instances where the physics of diffusion plays a central role. It can be fairly argued that the vast majority of nature is governed by diffusion.
Physical principles:-
Internal energy, heat, conduction, diffusion, scale analysis, non-dimensionalization.
Homework: 314_DiffProbs13.pdf
Handouts:-
Heat, Conduction, and diffusion notes (pdf)
Required readings:-
The diffusion notes above.
Lab:-
Here is the assignment Diffusion_2013.pdf
Graph paper if you need it (pdf)
And here are the matlab files that are needed to solve the diffusion problem for lab.
