Math 302: Differential Equations

Fall 2000, UAF

Instructor: Ed Bueler
Office: Chapman 301C.   Office Hours.
Phone: 474-7693, eMail: ffelb@uaf.edu
Web Site: http://www.math.uaf.edu/~bueler/		 Class Time:  MWF 2:15 -- 3:15 pm,  Chapman 104

Text: 
Nagle & Saff, Fund. of Diff. Equations, 5th ed.

The Course:

This course will introduce you to the form in which science and engineering use mathematics most frequently: differential equations.  You will understand why you had to take so much calculus!  You will begin to think of mathematics dynamically and in terms of movies drawn in your head.  I will try to present a broad, and not too "cookbook" approach to differential equations.  This may well make it harder, as you will have to learn methods and comprehend some more advanced ideas ...

We will cover chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 of the textbook, and I will try to motivate the ideas in chapters 9 and 10 as well.  See the separate topics page for a detailed (though tentative) schedule of days and topics.

The Grade:

Two thirds of your grade will be determined by  four hours of exams:
Exam # 1 
Exam # 2
Final Exam		 Monday, Oct. 9   (one hour)
Monday, Nov. 13   (one hour)
Wednesday, Dec. 20, 1 - 3pm   (two hours)

One third of the grade will be determined by 11 graded homework assignments.   Six of the assignments will involve graded group work.   The course grade will be determined by points on the exams and homework, according to the following schedule:
Percent
90 - 100 % 
79 - 89 % 
68 - 78 % 
57 - 67 % 
0 - 56 % 		 Grade
A
B
C
D
F

Computer Use in this course:

A CDROM called Interactive Differential Equations came with your textbook.  You will not be required to use it, but it will help you visualize a lot.  It requires a PC or Mac, and runs under a Web viewer like Netscape or Internet Explorer.

A useful homework helper is the MathServ ODE Toolkit at "http://mss.math.vanderbilt.edu/~pscrooke/detoolkit.html".  You can use it to calculate some formulas, as well as draw graphs.

Other Books and Related Courses:

A common alternate text for a course like Math 302 is Boyce & DiPrima, Elementary Differential Equations.  It has a more traditional, method-oriented emphasis.  A completely different book is Zwillinger, Handbook of Differential Equations.  It seems at first like just a list of differential equations, but turns out to have great explanations of lots of methods.

Math 421 and 422 are courses covering advanced differential equations (DEs), and especially partial DEs.  Math 310 includes computer methods for solving DEs, and Math 314 includes the linear algebra needed to really understand systems of DEs and the idea of independent solutions to linear DEs.  Math 460 includes lots of models using DEs, like those in chapters 3 and 5.

There are many courses that use DEs, but a list of the most important might be: ATM 401, BIOL 671, CHEM 331, CE 631, ECON 636, EE 353, EE 354, EE 451, EE 471, ES 301, GEOS 614, MSL 629, MATH 460, ME 404, ME 408, ME 409, ME 441, PETE 489, PHYS 311, PHYS 331, and PHYS 651.