Marder, Michael P., 1960-2011-03-232017-05-112011-03-232017-05-112009-05http://hdl.handle.net/2152/10648textThis thesis contains three separate yet closely related topics: fracture, friction and simulation of mechanical response of a confined granular medium. The first two are experimental investigations and the last one is a numerical study. In the fracture part, I will describe how to break a piece of silicon in a controlled way such that the atomic nature of the fracture process can be revealed in a macroscopic experiment. In the friction part, I will present another experiment using almost exactly the same setup as for the low temperature fracture experiment to study the properties of static friction and explore ideas concerning the origin of friction. In the last part, I will construct a confined granular packing and study how pulses and continuous waves propagate through it. All these three topics are relevant to geophysical science. I sincerely hope that my study can ignite some fresh thinking in that area and help other researchers to design models that can make more precise earthquake predictions.electronicengCopyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.FractureFrictionGranular simulationPulsesWaves