Maxima by Example: Ch. 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11



On Sun, 3 May 2009, Robert Dodier wrote:

> Broad interest in nonlinear dynamics might have peaked around
> 1995. One professor told me around that time, "I was doing nonlinear
> dynamics before it was popular and I'll still be doing it when it is
> unpopular again." If anyone knows what's happening in the nonlinear
> world I'd be interested to hear about it.

By "nonlinear dynamics" do you mean "trying to solve theoretical
physics problems that contain non-linear terms"?  If so, there's a lot
of activity in fields I tend to read about, e.g.

- climate modelling (nice review in Scaife et al., Phys. World 20(2):
   20-25, Feb. 2007)

- the turbulent version of the Stefan problem (growth and ablation of
   sea ice, recently Eisenman and Wettlaufer,
   Proc. Na?l. Acad. Sci. United States Am. 106(1): 28-32, Jan. 2009,
   doi:10.1073/pnas.0806887106)

- convection-controlled heat transfer at solid walls (iceberg melting,
   recently Wells and Worster, J. Fluid Mech. 609: 111-137, Aug. 2008,
   doi:10.1017/S0022112008002346)

- advective heat and solute transport in groundwater, particularly
   when coupled with buoyancy-driven convection (recently, much of
   Phillips, Geological Fluid Dynamics: Sub-Surface Flow and Reactions,
   Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009)

I guess this list tends to confirm what dlakelan said about `more of a
tool than a topic in itself'.

-- 

Regards,

Dan