Knowledge: The student who successfully completes the course will have the knowledge concerning the physical properties of rocks useful for the exploration geophysics, such as the pore geometry, the wettability, the permeability, the mechanic and electric properties. Syllabus: Rocks as porous and heterogeneous media. Properties of the porous space. Porosity. Inner surface: roughness and fractal dimension. Rocks as porous media: porous geometry, interfacial interactions, wettability. Rocks as heterogeneous systems: Effective Medium Theory and Percolation Theory. Fluid transport in porous media: permeability. Mechanical properties of dry and fluid-saturated rocks. Acoustic Properties: wave propagation (velocity, attenuation, anisotropy) in saturated porous media (as effective and viscoelastic media). Electric and dielectric properties: d.c. and a.c. conductivity, electromagnetic wave propagation in porous media. Radioactivity of rocks, interaction with ionizing radiations (g rays and neutrons) and application to geophysical logs. NMR relaxation and its application in well-log and core analysis.

Bibliography: Recommended reading includes the following works: 1) "Introduction to the physics of rocks" by Yves Guéguen and Victor Palciauskas. 2) For acoustic properties only we suggest chapters 2 and 3 of “Acoustics of Porous Media” by Thierry Bourbié, Olivier Coussy Editions TECHNIP, 1987 3) Further bibliography (notes, papers) will be made available during lectures and in the website of the course.