Software Tools
In this course, we will make use of a variety of software tools. Most
of what you need comes with the book. One exception is a spreadsheet,
which we will use for some numerical experiments. I assume you have
access to and know how to use a spreadsheet.
One other tool that you may want to consider, assuming that you know how to use MATLAB, is Ordinary Differential Equations using MATLAB. This package may be used in conjunction with MATLAB, which is available on ACS. Best of all, it's free! It was written by John Polking. You can copy it from my ACS account by typing the following commands: If you are using MATLAB5, type the following three commands:
cp ~bob/MA226/dfield5.m .
cp ~bob/MA226/pplane5.m .
cp ~bob/MA226/ppn5out.m .
Or if you are using MATLAB4, type the following four commands:
cp ~bob/MA226/pplane.m .
cp ~bob/MA226/ppsolve.m .
cp ~bob/MA226/dfield.m .
cp ~bob/MA226/dfsolve.m .
In either case, you should type these commands exactly as written. Note the space followed by a period at the end and the space after cp and before ~bob...
There are two different programs here. One, called dfield, is for one dimensional differential equations. The other, pplane, is for systems. To run either program, first open MATLAB. If you wish to run MATLAB5, type matlab5 at the acs prompt. When the program is running, type dfield5 or pplane5 at the >> prompt. For MATLAB 4, just type matlab at the acs prompt, followed by dfield or pplane. The program will (slowly) open both a control window and a graphics window. Have fun.
On the WWW. There are a number of Java applets available on the web
to plot phase planes.
One applet is available from
Richard
Mansfield at Penn State.
I have not made extensive use of any of these applets
so I cannot vouch for their
suitability, but they are there and they are free....