MS325 - B - Chaos and Modern Dynamics

This book is about chaos and dynamical systems. Roughly speaking, a dynamical system is a rule that determines how a quantity evolves in time and chaos when extreme sensitivity to initial conditions occurs so that, for all practical purposes, it eventually becomes impossible to predict future values of the quantity. The modern approach to dynamics, including those aspects relating to chaos, has developed rapidly over the last four decades mainly through the availability of powerful computers with numerical and graphical capabilities. This block reflects this history by using Maple to provide students with experience of the behaviour of simple dynamical systems. However, a large part of this block also uses conventional pencil-and-paper methods necessary to consolidate this intuitive understanding.This block contains exercises and activities which use a commercial software package called Maple , you are advised that you will need access to this software to allow the exercises and activities to be completed.