Description
Cambridge The Chronologers Quest The Search For The Age Of The Earth by Patrick Wyse Jackson
The debate over the age of the Earth has been ongoing for over two thousand years, and has pitted physicists and astronomers against biologists, and religious philosophers against geologists. The Chronologers' Quest tells the fascinating story of our attempts to determine the age of the Earth. This book investigates the many novel methods used in the search for the Earth's age, from James Ussher and John Lightfoot examining biblical chronologies, and from Comte de Buffon and Lord Kelvin determining the length of time for the cooling of the Earth, to the more recent investigations of Arthur Holmes and Clair Patterson into radioactive dating of rocks and meteorites. The Chronologers' Quest is a readable account of the measurement of geological time. It will be of great interest to a wide range of readers, from those with little scientific background to students and scientists in a wide range of the Earth sciences. 1. Tailoring Optical Fiber Design for Communication 2. Polarization Effects in Single Mode Optical Fibers 3. Optical Fiber Amplifiers 4. Temporal and Spatial Optical Solitons 5. Cerenkov Nonlinear Interactions in Optical Waveguides 6. Photonic Crystal Fibers 7. Side-Polished Fiber Coupler Half Block and Devices 8. Fused Fiber Coupler-based Components for Optical Fiber Communication 9. Optical Fiber Gratings and their Applications 10. Optical Fiber Sensors; Opportunities, Underlying Principles and Examples 11. Modified Airy Function Method for Solving Optical Waveguide Problems 12. Perturbation Method for Rectangular Core Waveguides and Devices 13. Scalar Variational Analysis for Optical Waveguides 14. Optimal Variational Method for Rectangular and Channel Waveguides 15. Numerical Methods for Scalar Wave Propagation