Winter-Spring 1997

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Announcements

 

What's the IDEA
By Thomas LoFaro; Kevin Cooper

IDEA, or Internet Differential Equations Activities, is funded by a Course and Curriculum Development grant from the Directorate of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation. The project objective is the development of a "interactive virtual lab book" for differential equations at the undergraduate level. Most of the materials on the site so far have been developed at Washington State University; expansion involves contributions from colleagues worldwide.

HPV Made Easier
By Forest W. Simmons

The author presents an alternative approach to modeling human powered vehicles as a follow up to an article that appeared in the Spring-Summer 1996 issue.

Modeling with Difference Equations at the Precalculus Level
By Sheldon P. Gordon

By revamping precalculus and college algebra to include a significant amount of modeling via difference equations, one can help students see applications of mathematics to interesting phenomena.

Modeling the Pumping of a Swing
By Stephen Wirkus; Richard Rand; Andy Ruina

This article describes various models for the pumping of a swing. The authors show that autonomous forcing is more realistic than nonautonomous forcing, and present other findings related to optimal pumping.

On Curves of Pursuit: A Computer Laboratory Project in Differential Equations
By Ernest D. True

The pursuit problem is one in which the quarry moves along some path unknown to a pursuer, whose objective is to catch the quarry. The problem is to determine the path of the pursuer as it tries to catch the quarry.

ODE Architect: Interactive Multimedia Modeling, Differential Equation Solving
By Courtney Coleman

This article describes ODE Architect, a multimedia tool for modeling differential equations.

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