Nonlinear Physics For Beginners Fractals Chaos Solitons Pattern Formation Cellular Automata And Complex Systems

Almost all real systems are nonlinear. For a nonlinear system the superposition principle breaks down: The system's response is not proportional to the stimulus it receives; the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The three parts of this book contains the basics of nonlinear science, with applications in physics. Part I contains an overview of fractals, chaos, solitons, pattern formation, cellular automata and complex systems. In Part II, 14 reviews and essays by pioneers, as well as 10 research articles are reprinted. Part III collects 17 students projects, with computer algorithms for simulation models included.The book can be used for self-study, as a textbook for a one-semester course, or as supplement to other courses in linear or nonlinear systems. The reader should have some knowledge in introductory college physics. No mathematics beyond calculus and no computer literacy are assumed.

Almost all real systems are nonlinear. For a nonlinear system the superposition principle breaks down: The system's response is not proportional to the stimulus it receives; the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The three parts of this book contains the basics of nonlinear science, with applications in physics. Part I contains an overview of fractals, chaos, solitons, pattern formation, cellular automata and complex systems. In Part II, 14 reviews and essays by pioneers, as well as 10 research articles are reprinted. Part III collects 17 students projects, with computer algorithms for simulation models included.The book can be used for self-study, as a textbook for a one-semester course, or as supplement to other courses in linear or nonlinear systems. The reader should have some knowledge in introductory college physics. No mathematics beyond calculus and no computer literacy are assumed.

This textbook provides an introduction to the new science of nonlinear physics for advanced undergraduates, beginning graduate students, and researchers entering the field. The chapters, by pioneers and experts in the field, share a unified perspective. Nonlinear science developed out of the increasing ability to investigate and analyze systems for which effects are not simply linear functions of their causes; it is associated with such well-known code words as chaos, fractals, pattern formation, solitons, cellular automata, and complex systems. Nonlinear phenomena are important in many fields, including dynamical systems, fluid dynamics, materials science, statistical physics, and paritcel physics. The general principles developed in this text are applicable in a wide variety of fields in the natural and social sciences. The book will thus be of interest not only to physicists, but also to engineers, chemists, geologists, biologists, economists, and others interested in nonlinear phenomena. Examples and exercises complement the text, and extensive references provide a guide to research in the field.

The didactical level of exposition, together with many astonishing images and animations, accompanied by the related simple computer programming codes (in Python and POV-Ray languages) make this book an extremely and unique useful tool to test the power of algorithmic information in generating ordered structure models (2D and 3D) like regular geometric shapes, complex shapes like fractals and cellular automata, and biological systems as the organs of a living body. Informational biologists besides mathematicians and physicists of complexity may learn to test their own capabilities in programming and modelling ordered structures starting from random initial conditions at different scale of each system: from elementary particles, to biological systems, to galaxies and the whole universe. Moreover the philosophical comments comparing some aspects of modern information theory to the Aristotelian notion of 'form are very appealing also for the epistemologist and the philosopher involved in complexity matters.

There is a lot of confusion and misconception concerning science. The nature and contents of science is an unsettled problem. For example, Thales of 2,600 years ago is recognized as the father of science but the word science was introduced only in the 14th century; the definition of science is often avoided in books about philosophy of science. This book aims to clear up all these confusions and present new developments in the philosophy, history, sociology and communication of science. It also aims to showcase the achievement of China's top scholars in these areas. The 18 chapters, divided into five parts, are written by prominent scholars including the Nobel laureate Robin Warren, sociologist Harry Collins, and physicist-turned-historian Dietrich Stauffer. Contents: Preface: About Science 1: Basics OCo Knowledge, Nature, Science and Scimat (Lui Lam); About Science 2: Philosophy, History, Sociology and Communication (Lui Lam); Philosophy of Science: Towards a Phenomenological Philosophy of Science (Guo-Sheng Wu); The Predicament of Scientific Culture in Ancient China (Hong-Sheng Wang); What Do Scientists Know! (Nigel Sanitt); How to Deal with the Whole: Two Kinds of Holism in Methodology (Jin-Yang Liu); History of Science: Helicobactor: The Ease and Difficulty of a New Discovery (Robin Warren); Science in Victorian Era: New Observations on Two Old Theses (Dun Liu); Medical Studies in Portugal Around 1911 (Maria Burguete); The Founding of the International Liquid Crystal Society (Lui Lam); Sociology of Science: Three Waves in Science Studies (Harry Collins); Solitons and Revolution in China: 1978OCo1983 (Lui Lam); Scientific Culture in Contemporary China (Bing Liu and Mei-Fang Zhang); Communication of Science: Science Communication: A History and Review (Peter Broks); Popular-Science Writings in Early Modern China (Lin Yin); Other Science Matters: Understanding Art Through Science: From Socrates to the Contextual Brain (Kajsa Berg); Spy Video Games After 9/11: Narrative and Pleasure (Ting-Ting Wang); Statistical Physics for Humanities: A Tutorial (Dietrich Stauffer). Readership: Researchers and laypeople interested in science."

The International Symposium on Frontiers of Science was held to celebrate the 80th birthday of Chen Ning Yang, one of the great physicists of the 20th century and arguably the most-admired living scientist in China today. Many of the world's great scientists — including sixteen Nobel laureates, Fields medallists and Wolf Prize winners — converged on Beijing from all corners of the globe to pay tribute to Professor Yang. The Symposium was organized by Tsinghua University, with which Professor Yang has had a lifelong relationship. In 1997, he helped to found the Center for Advanced Study at Tsinghua, was appointed to the university's faculty, and has since devoted his energy to the growth of the Center. This unique and invaluable birthday volume is a collection of the presentations made at the Symposium, including fifteen plenary talks, seven of which are by Nobel laureates. It covers a wide range of topics and mirrors Professor Yang's research and intellectual interests. The range of fields encompasses high-energy, condensed-matter, mathematical, applied, bio-, astro-, atomic and quantum physics. Also included are talks given at the birthday banquet. About C N Yang Born in 1922 in Anwhei, China, C N Yang was brought up in the academic atmosphere of Tsinghua University in Beijing, where his father was a professor of mathematics. He received his college education at the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming, China, and completed his BSc there in 1942. His MSc was received in 1944 from Tsinghua University. He entered the University of Chicago in 1946, where he came under the strong influence of Prof E Fermi. After receiving his PhD in 1948, Prof Yang served for a year at the University of Chicago as an instructor. Since 1949 he has been associated with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where he became a professor in 1955. Prof Yang has worked on various subjects in physics, but is mainly interested in statistical mechanics and symmetry principles. He is a prolific author, his numerous articles appearing in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, The Physical Review, Reviews of Modern Physics and the Chinese Journal of Physics. Prof Yang won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957, jointly with T-D Lee. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of Academia Sinica. Contents:Nobel Laureates and Wolf Prize WinnerThe Laser — What It Is and How It Happened (C H Townes, Nobel laureate Berkeley)Neutrino Physics (R L Moessbauer, Nobel laureate Muenchen)Gauge Theory at Tsinghua (S-S Chern, Wolf Prize winner Nankai University & Berkeley)Emergent Relativity (R B Laughlin, Nobel laureate Stanford)Watching Molecular Systems Work, One at a Time (S Chu, Nobel laureate Stanford)The Hidden Information in the Standard Model (G 't Hooft, Nobel laureate Utrecht)Bose–Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Gas the First 70 Years and Some Recent Experiments (E A Cornell & C E Wieman, Nobel laureates Colorado)Production of a Bose–Einstein Condensate of Metastable Helium Atoms (C Cohen-Tannoudji, Nobel laureate College de France)Other Plenary SpeakersFunctional Analysis of the Human Genome: Study of Genetic Disease (L-C Tsui, Toronto)Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy Studies of Cuprate Superconductors (Z-X Shen, Stanford University)Superconductivity in 4-Angstrom Carbon Nanotubes (P Sheng, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)Understanding High Tc Superconductivity (Z-Y Weng, Tsinghua University)Some Reflections on the Mechanization of Mental Labor in the Computer Age (W-T Wu, Academia Sinica)Research and Development Towards X-Ray Free Electron Lasers (L H Yu, Brookhaven National Laboratory)Imaging the Quantum World Using the Phase of Electron Waves (A Tonomura, Hitachi)Papers from Parallel Sessions, and Speeches Readership: Researchers in physics. Keywords:Science;Physics;C N Yang;High Energy Physics;Condensed Matter Physics