280260 PR Instrumentenpraktikum Magnetik (2008S)

ECTS: 2 credit points
Within the course, the students get familiar with different types of modern magnetic instruments and measuring techniques. The main goal is to make the students capable of handling the precise and in most cases very expensive instruments carefully and correctly and to perform the measurements of the earth magnetic field, i.e. the different vector components of the field. Additionally, a gyro compass is used to determine the geographic North direction, which is required to calculate the magnetic declination.
All measurements are carried out at a field site close to the lecture room. Since the Earth's magnetic field varies with time, the measured values have to be corrected ('reduced') for this variations in order to obtain the true magnetic field values for any measuring site. The reduction is done by subtraction of the respective observatory field values (geomagnetic observatory Wien-Cobenzl) measured at the same time.
In the course the theoretical aspects of the different instrument principles are presented, too, and the basic literature references are given.