Yale University - Department of Geology and Geophysics

Department of Geology & Geophysics Colloquium

Wednesdays 4-5 PM, Kline Geology Laboratory, Room 123

Date	Speaker	Title
Fall 2007
Sep. 5	Francis Nimmo University of California Santa Cruz	What's Going on at Enceladus?
Sep. 12*	Kevin Trenberth National Center for Atmospheric Research	Global Warming is Unequivocal
Sep. 19	Shuhai Xiao Virginia Polytechnic Institute	Ediacaran Oxygenation and Evolution: A Perspective From South China
Sep. 26	Patrick Orr University College Dublin	The Preservation of Burgess Shale Fossils
Oct. 3	Matthew Huber Purdue University	Tropical Cyclone Induced Ocean Mixing and Climate
Oct. 10	Göran Ekström Columbia University	No-fault earthquakes
Oct. 17	Rob Van der Voo University of Michigan	What's the Matter with Pangea?
Oct. 24	Melany Hunt California Institute of Technology	Solving the Mystery of Booming Sand Dunes
Oct. 31	Lianxing Wen State University of New York at Stony Brook	Feeling the heartbeat of the Earth?
Nov. 14	John Marshall Massachusetts Institute of Technology	GFD experiments in climate and paleoclimate: speculations on the climate of an aquaplanet
Nov. 28	Donald Canfield University of Southern Denmark	The evolution of Neoproterozoic ocean chemistry
Dec. 5	Jim McElwaine University of Cambridge	The Dynamics of Avalanches (abstract)
*NOTE - held at Sloane Physics Lab, Room 58

Past colloquia

Spring 2007, Fall 2006, Spring 2006, Fall 2005, Spring 2005, Fall 2004, Spring 2004

Contact

Please address inquiries to the colloquium committee (Email: colloquium [at] earth.geology.yale.edu).
Faysal Bibi, Devin McPhillips, Kazuhiko Otsuka, Daniel Peppe, Melissa Spannuth, Erik Sperling, Erik Thomson, Bryan Woods, Prof. Steven Sherwood

Abstract

December 5
Jim McElwaine The Dynamics of Avalanches
Powder snow avalanches, turbidity currents and pyroclastic flows are all examples of gravity currents. In these flows particles are suspended by turbulence and the excess weight of the mixed fluid drives the flow down or along a slope. We will show results from small scale experiments to full-size avalanche observations. Some simple theories will be developed and used to extend classical results concerning the Froude number and front angle for gravity currents. We will then compare these theories with the various experiments.