Physics 221A : Course Outline

Subject Matter
The UCSD course catalog describes a two-quarter sequence in graduate nonlinear dynamics, Physics 221A-B. However, the second half of this course (221B) is not scheduled to be offered during the next academic year. Therefore I've decided to ignore the course catalog and give a hybrid course which draws on material from each. The subject matter can roughly be divided along the lines of ODEs versus PDEs. The ODE (Ordinary Differential Equations) material will cover dynamical systems, nonlinear oscillators, some Hamiltonian mechanics, and chaos. I will assume you have some familiarity with Hamiltonian mechanics from Physics 200A-B or the equivalent. The PDE (Partial Differential Equations) material will treat front propagation, shock waves, pattern formation, and solitons.


Texts
In addition to not paying much attention to the course catalog, I'm also not going to pay much attention to the course text, which is Paul Manneville's Instabilities, Chaos, and Turbulence (2nd edition). I'll instead be following my lecture notes, which are available through the course web site. The Ott text will be useful for some of the material on chaos. Alas there is no single book which covers the broad selection of material we will discuss in this course. A list of relevant texts is provided in chapter 0 of the notes.

Course Web Site
Lecture notes and reading assignments, important announcements, homework assignments and solutions will all be available through the course web site. Please check it regularly to see if there is new material. I am writing my lecture notes as we go along, and I will indicate on the lecture notes page the date, time, and size (in pages) of the most recent upload for each chapter.

Problem Sets
There will be about five problem sets assigned this quarter. Problem sets will not be printed out for you, but rather will be available through the course website. You are encouraged to discuss the problem sets with your fellow students. I suggest that you initially try to do the problems by yourselves, so that you can more accurately identify your confusions and honestly assess your weaknesses. Then, before you write up your assignment, get together with some of your fellow students to talk over the problems and hammer out the details. I will try to prepare solution sets in a timely manner.

Grades
Your grade will be determined by the following formula: 40% homework, 40% final project, 20% intangibles. The latter category includes things like class participation, personal hygiene, laughing at my jokes, etc.

Final Project

Rather than a final exam, there will be a final project, the details of which will be revealed in the not-too-distant future.

Discussion Boards

The course home page contains a link to the Physics Department discussion boards. You must register in order to be able to post. This is a place where you can publicly discuss the course, ask me and the TA questions, inform me of errors and typos in the lecture notes, etc.