Instructor: Govind Menon
Room 325, 182 George St.
Tel: 863-3793. Email lastname@dam.brown.edu.
Course URL: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/menon/am136.html Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday, 11 am-12 noon, and by appointment.
Textbook: Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos ,
S.H. Strogatz , 1994.
This class is an introduction to nonlinear dynamics and
chaos. We will study (a) qualitative methods for dynamical
systems, (b) examples from biology, chemistry
and physics. The goal is to cover
one and two dimensional flows quite completely in the first nine
weeks, and to present an introduction to chaos in the remainder of the
class.
Prerequisites: Calculus, some familiarity with differential
equations, and a willingness to get your hands
dirty with calculations...
Exams, HW and grading policy
There will be two in-class exams (each worth 15% of your grade), and
a final exam (30%). The dates for these exams are as follows:
1st exam: Monday, Feb. 26, in class.
2nd exam: Monday, April 23, in class.
Final exam: Thursday, May 17.
The remainder of your grade will be based on homework (25%) and a final
project (15%). Homework will be assigned weekly on Wednesday and will be due
the following Wednesday. Strogatz's book contains a wealth of
interesting problems of varied difficulty, and one can understand the
subject only by struggling with these problems.
Stand-in lecturers
I will be away on the following dates because of prior research commitments:
Jan 23, Jan 26, Feb. 26, April 3, April 23. Ravi Srinivasan will teach from my
lecture notes on these dates, so please attend class as usual.
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