Helmholz is pwned
I got to revel in my nerdiness today.
Today in my geophysics class, we started with the seismic wave equation. The prof wrote the solution as Helmholz dictates: that is, the solution can be written as the sum of the gradient of a scalar potential and the curl of a vector potential. The gradient of the scalar potential corresponds to changes in volume and the curl of the vector potential deal with rotation.
My brain was filled with thoughts of electric fields and radiating waves. I looked at my classmate and whispered, "So do you suppose the scalar potential corresponds to a compression wave and the vector potential is a shear wave?"
She shrugged. I thought about asking, but decided to see where this went.
As it turns out, I'm glad I didn't ask because that was the punchline of the lecture. When he explained this, my classmate looked at me and nodded.
So apparently emag and seismology do have something in common. I can now tell my parents that the last couple years of my life weren't wasted.
But what the heck is up with putting the vector bar under the variable????
(FYI, I suppose this makes up for me not being able to multiply matrices last week.) :-)
Today in my geophysics class, we started with the seismic wave equation. The prof wrote the solution as Helmholz dictates: that is, the solution can be written as the sum of the gradient of a scalar potential and the curl of a vector potential. The gradient of the scalar potential corresponds to changes in volume and the curl of the vector potential deal with rotation.
My brain was filled with thoughts of electric fields and radiating waves. I looked at my classmate and whispered, "So do you suppose the scalar potential corresponds to a compression wave and the vector potential is a shear wave?"
She shrugged. I thought about asking, but decided to see where this went.
As it turns out, I'm glad I didn't ask because that was the punchline of the lecture. When he explained this, my classmate looked at me and nodded.
So apparently emag and seismology do have something in common. I can now tell my parents that the last couple years of my life weren't wasted.
But what the heck is up with putting the vector bar under the variable????
(FYI, I suppose this makes up for me not being able to multiply matrices last week.) :-)