Rock magnetism

Rock magnetism is the basic and applied science of the magnetic properties of rocks, minerals, sediments and soils. Its sister discipline is paleomagnetism, the science of the magnetic record found in rocks, sediments, and archaeological materials.

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Quotes

Most observers of the geophysical scene, those involved with plate tectonics and continental drift in particular, are aware of the seminal contributions of rock magnetism and its sister discipline, paleomagnetism, which some have called “applied rock magnetism.” That was in the heady days of the 1960s. As a discipline, however esoteric, rock magnetism goes further back to the 19th century when the Swedish prospectors for iron ores and Italian and German paleomagnetists in search of the history of the geomagnetic field were using rock magnetism as an exciting new tool. The first book on rock magnetism, Der Gesteinsmagnetismus by H. Haalck, was published in 1942, more than a decade before T. Nagata's Rock Magnetism, cited by Dunlop and Özdemir as the earliest work on the subject. There have been more recent volumes on the subject, including one that I coauthored with Frank Stacey. However, I am not exaggerating when I say that Rock Magnetism: Fundamentals and Frontiers leaves the others in the dust.
- Subir K. Banerjee: (August 4, 1998)"Review of Rock Magnetism: Fundamental and Frontiers by David J. Dunlop and Özden Özdemir". Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 79 (31). DOI:10.1029/98EO00287.

Rock magnetism is the term commonly applied to the study of the magnetic properties of rocks and minerals, how these properties depend on factors such as grain size and shape, temperature and pressure, and the origin and characteristics of the different types of remanent magnetizations which rocks and magnetic minerals can acquire. Although all minerals possess some magnetic properties, even if only paramagnetic or diamagnetic, the term ‘magnetic minerals’ is used here only for those minerals which are capable of carrying remanent magnetism.
- D. W. Collinson: "Chapter 1. Rock magnetism and magnetic minerals". Methods in Rock Magnetism and Palaeomagnetism. Dordrecht: Springer. 1983.

Weiss (1907) was intrigued by the fact that iron and other ‘soft’ ferromagnetic materials with small permanent magnetization become strongly magnetized when exposed to quite weak magnetic fields. Weiss proposed that external fields play a minor role compared to a hypothesized internal ‘molecular field’ which aligns the magnetic moments of individual atoms, producing a spontaneous magnetization, M_s. In the absence of any external field, the magnetic moments of regions with different directions of M_s (now called domains) cancel almost perfectly, but even a small applied field will either rotate domains or enlarge some at the expense of others. Weiss’ theory is the starting point for modern ideas about ferromagnetism ... and ferromagnetic domains ...
- David J. Dunlop and Özden Özdemir: Rock Magnetism: Fundamentals and Frontiers. Cambridge University Press. 1997. p. 3. ISBN 9780521000987.

In rock magnetism our interest in very low temperature properties is restricted to two effects, the processes of demagnetization which accompany phase changes in magnetite and hematite, and the low-temperature evidence for cation distribution between non-equivalent lattice sites in ferrites. However, spin waves themselves are important. They provide the mechanism whereby thermal excitation affects the magnetic properties of ferromagnetic materials ... The structure of spin waves is closely related to that of domain walls ...
- Frank D. Stacey and Subir K. Banerjee: Stacey, Frank (2 December 2012). The Physical Principles of Rock Magnetism. Elsevier. pp. 8–9. ISBN 9780444601780.