Rocks and minerals are complex and beautiful materials;and, thus, understanding, modeling, and predicting their physical and chemical behavior under the wide variety of natural geologic conditions present throughout the Earth and other planets is both challenging and rewarding. Over 3500 naturally occurring minerals have been identified, and these crystals, even when nominally “pure”, incorporate solid-solution impurities, point defects, line defects, twins, phase- and grain-boundaries, and other variations in major- and minor-element chemistry that profoundly influence their physical properties and chemical behavior. Most rocks are composed of an ensemble of minerals, arrayed with structure and textures that reflect complicated natural processes and history. Even when considered to be “mono-minerallic”, rocks usually contain minor-accessory solid phases, and the geologic environment is replete with multi-component fluids; both the accessory solids and the fluids will strongly interact with the majority solid-phases, particularly under the extreme conditions of pressure and temperature found in interior of the Earth and other planets.
Despite, and perhaps because, of these rich scientific challenges, unravelling the relations among structure and properties is an intellectually rewarding activity at the core of understanding natural processes. Clearly, nature does not respect the rigorous strictures of academic categorization. Thus, EAPS scientists studying rock and mineral physics use state-of-the-art methods and techniques from experimental and theoretical solid-state physics, materials science, non-linear dynamics, physical chemistry, petrology, continuum mechanics and geo-engineering. In the best case, work within the Earth sciences is an intellectual endeavor that is vertically integrated. Fortunately scholars at all levels within EAPS enjoy an academic environment with vigorous, constructive, and intense interactions among such diverse disciplines as geodynamics, reservoir engineering, planetary sciences, hydrology, geo-biology, structural geology, petrology, and seismology.
In this website, we have collected some information about our work, and provided some contact information. Progress and results in this area are very dynamic, so the site will be changing often, but we hope that your visit will give you a sense of the excitement and enthusiasm with which students and staff pursue the study of Rock and Mineral Physics within EAPS.