Due: At the start of class on Wednesday, April 21.

Group project: This is a group project with each group having either three or four members. Once a group begins work on the project, its membership cannot change. Consequently establishing your group must be your first step in this project. Each group will submit one report, and all members of the group will receive the same grade for this project.

Goals:

1. To become familiar with the long-term behavior of solutions to certain forced second-order equations.
2. To study the relationship between the frequency of the forcing and the amplitude of the solutions.

Project description: Compute k₁ and k₂ as you did in Project 1. That is, k₁ = 12 + 0.1 a and k₂ = 5 - 0.05 a where a is the average (accurate to two decimal places) of the last digits of the BU ID numbers of all members in the group. For example, if the last digits are 0, 1, 2, and 2, then a = 1.25, k₁ = 12.12, and k₂ = 4.94. After computing these parameters, follow this project description.

Images of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge: You can view images of the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge at many sites on the web. Here are a few:

• Nova web site
  Has two nice video clips 2/3 of the way down the page.
• Some history
• A few photos

Your report: Your report should be no longer than five typewritten pages, and it should address all of the questions in the project description. You may provide as many illustrations from the computer as you wish, but the relevance of each illustration to your report must be evident. (Please remember that, although one good illustration may be worth 1000 words, 1000 illustrations are worth nothing.) Please insert your illustrations at appropriate places in your report rather than attaching them to the end of the report.

Academic Conduct: Your work and conduct in this course are governed by the CAS Academic Conduct Code. This code is designed to promote high standards of academic honesty and integrity as well as fairness. A copy of the code is available in CAS Room 105 if you cannot access it on the web, and it is your responsibility to know and follow the provisions of the code. In particular, all work that you submit in this course must be your original work. For example, you can only discuss your project with other members of your group, with Blanchard, or with Marotta. Moreover, the computations that you do for your report as well as the text of your report must be original to your group. All group members are responsible for all aspects of the report. Any cases of suspected academic misconduct will be reported to the CAS Dean's Office.