A geoscientist is someone who studies the earth's physical makeup and history. Geoscience helps us find the key to new sources of useful earth materials, and understand earth processes that affect our lives. Geoscientists enjoy the earth. It is an outdoor laboratory filled with opportunities to observe earth processes in action. By applying knowledge of forces that shape the earth, geoscientists seek to reconstruct the past and anticipate the future.
Geophysicists help to decipher the earth's interior and magnetic, electric and gravitational fields.
Our profession is one that is filled with the riches of mathematics and physics. There are few things as satisfying as predicting how the earth will respond to a given event, and then going out into the field and recording geophysical measurements which prove our theory. Others try to understand those parts of the earth which have a more direct bearing on current human affairs, for example the exploration of the earth's crust for hydrocarbons and minerals. Some of us have the particular challenge of making specific predictions, based on our geophysical measurements, which pinpoint where and how a borehole, several miles deep, is to be drilled. Geophysicists work with some of the most exciting tools around.