Nonlinear Dynamics, Modeling, and the Environmental Sciences: Ideas and Tools
Elizabeth Bradley presents Nonlinear Dynamics, Modeling, and the Environmental Sciences: Ideas and Tools
| What | Seminar |
|---|---|
| When |
2005-12-01 04:10 PM
2005-12-01 05:00 PM
December 01, 2005 from 04:10 pm to 05:00 pm |
| Where | PES 3001 |
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Elizabeth Bradley from the University of Colorado will give a seminar titled Nonlinear Dynamics, Modeling, and the Environmental Sciences: Ideas and Tools. All are invited to attend.
Nonlinearity and chaos are ubiquitous and fascinating. Chaotic systems, in particular, are exquisitely sensitive to small perturbations, but their behavior has a fixed and highly characteristic pattern. Understanding this somewhat counterintuitive combination of effects is important to one's ability to model the physical world. One can even exploit these effects to obtain design improvements in engineered systems: spacecraft trajectories that require less fuel, for example, or fuel injectors that mix gasoline and air more effectively. This talk will begin with a review of some of the most basic ideas and tools of the field of nonlinear dynamics, and then cover a variety of interesting examples, ranging from environmental science and engineering to dance. Most of these tools were developed for low-dimensional systems and many of them require perfect models: situations that are rare in the environmental sciences. For practitioners in these fields, then, it is important to understand how and when to use which one, how to interpret the results, and how to recognize their failure modes.