Physics 313 Previous Announcements

Fall, 2008

You should be reading Chapter 4 of the Cross-Greenside book.
Review Appendix 1 on the elementary bifurcations. Strogatz's book on nonlinear dynamics is a good place if review is needed.
Look at Section 12.4 on the book on some numerical iterative ways of finding approximate stationary solutions of the evolution equations.
Please hand in Assignment 3 by the beginning of Wednesday's class on September 24.

All students attending the class, enrolled students and auditors, should complete Problem 1 of Assignment 1 as soon as possible.
You should be reading Chapter 2 of the Cross-Greenside book.
The first homework assignment is due by the beginning of Wednesday's class, on September 3.
A talk of possible interest to the class: "Who's Afraid of Chaotic Networks? Models of Sensory and Motor Processing in the Face of Spontaneous Neuronal Activity" by Larry Abbott, Room 103 of the Bryan Research Building from 12noon-1pm, Tuesday, September 9.
A brief context: it is known experimentally that neurons in the cortex of mammalian brains are active (fire action potentials) at some low rate even in the absence of stimuli and there has been much interest in whether this background activity is just an epiphenomenon or plays a role in information processing. Some theoretical calculations suggest that a sparsely connected network with brain-like details in which 80% of the neurons are excitatory and 20% are inhibitory automatically enters into a chaotic state and so such a background activity is expected and a result of chaos. But there is then the issue of how a brain with chaotic dynamics can function in a stable way (so an organism can survive day to day) and yet respond in a flexible way to novel stimuli. Prof. Abbott's talk will address some aspects of these ideas.
If you hear of seminars that might be of interest to the class, please let me know and I will post them on the 313 webpage.

A good reference for reading about criteria for thermodynamic equilibrium is Statistical Physics, Part 1, Third Edition by L. Landau and E. Lifshitz, Chapter 2, especially sections 9, 10, 12, 25, and 26.
Please finish reading Chapter 1 before Monday's September 1 lecture so you will be prepared to discuss the chapter in class.

Assignment 1 is now available.
1. Do Problem 1 of Assignment 1 before Wednesday's class (August 27).
2. Finish and hand in the rest of Assignment 1 by the beginning of next Wednesday's class on September 3.
Start reading Chapter 1 of the Cross-Greenside book and be prepared to discuss this chapter in class. You can get the password for the site of protected files from Professor Greenside.
Note: any comments or suggestions that you have about the chapters as you read them would be greatly appreciated by Michael Cross and myself.