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COLQ2992
Chaos Across the Sciences

Study Guide

The student should be able to know and understand the following things:

  • What is the Butterfly Effect, how was it discovered and why is it important?

  • What does sensitive dependence on initial conditions mean?

  • What is a bifurcation diagram?

  • What does the "onset of chaos" signify?

  • What is a fractal?

  • Be able to describe or diagram three different types of fractals.

Material to be included by the final:

  • What is an attractor?  What is a strange attractor?

  • What is turbulence and what theories (unsuccessful and sucessful) have been used to explain it?

  • What is Universality?  What mathematical representation did Feigenbaum use to display the behavior of equations as they were iterated?

  • What was Libchaber's experiment and why is it important?  How did Libchaber analyze his data to arrive at his results?

  • What is the Mandelbrot set and how is it arrived at?  How does the Mandelbrot set related to all Julia sets?

  • What was the Dynamical Systems Collective's powerful yet simple demonstration of the formation of strange attractors?

In each case the student should be able to give a definition, an explanation and provide an application of the concept involved.

 
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Revised: February 21, 2007