This book is the outcome of an introductory graduate-level course that I have given at the University of California, Los Angeles for a number of years as part of our program in Geophysics and Space Physics. Our program is physics-oriented and draws many of its students from the ranks of undergraduate physics and, sometimes, mathematics majors, in addition to geophysics and occasionally geology majors. Accordingly, this text approaches the subject by promoting a physics-based understanding of the basic principles with a relatively rigorous mathematical approach. Since the needs of this course were rather unique, blending concepts in physics and mathematics with the Earth sciences, I approached teaching the subject by drawing on many sources in developing the necessary material. (Throughout this volume, I refer to materials that provide more complete treatments of the topics which we only have time to overview.) In contrast to other sources, I wanted this course to treat not only classical methods but survey some of the ideas emerging in the geosciences that were drawn directly from current ideas in physics, especially nonlinear dynamics. Over time, the material developed more coherence and my lecture notes for this academic quarter-long course evolved into this text.

The subject of continuum mechanics is predicated on the notion that many natural phenomena have a fundamentally smooth, continuous nature. This constitutes the basis for solid and fluid mechanics, major components of this course.