FROM VIOLINS

TO VIDEOS

Chapter 5
 This chapter is a beautiful summarization of
the events starting from the purposeless study
of 1d strings on a violin to a very practical
device television.

A lot of physicists and mathematicians played

a role in cracking the 1d wave equation of a
violin string. All were instrumental in
bringing about the solution for 1d waves.
Including: Jan le rond Euler Bernoulli
d’alemert
This was extended to the vibrations of the surface
of the drum which is a 2d. Finally it showed up in
the areas of Electricity and Magnetism

Michael Faraday James Clerk Maxwell

Michael Faraday and subsequently Maxwell came

up with electromagnetic forces which was a giant
leap in the advancement of scientific
understanding.  Visible electromagnetic waves
with different frequencies produce different colors.
 BROKEN A symmetry of an object or

SYMMETRY system is any transformation that

leaves it invariant.

Chapter 6
TYPES OF
SYMMETRY
There are many types of symmetry. The
most important ones are reflections,
rotations and translations.
THE RHYTHM
OF LIFE
Chapter 7
 The nature of oscillation and Hopf bifurcation (if a simplified system wobbles,
then so must the complex system it is derived from) leads into a discussion of how
animals – specifically animals with legs – move, which is by staggered or
syncopated oscillations, oscillations of muscles triggered by neural circuits in the
THE RHYTHM OF brain.

LIFE This is a subject Stewart has written about elsewhere and is something of an expert
on. The seven types of quadrupedal gait are: the trot, pace, bound, walk, rotary
gallop, transverse gallop, and canter.
 DO DICE
PLAY GOD?
Chapter 8
Stewart’s take on chaos theory.

Chaotic behaviour obeys deterministic laws, but 19th century scientists thought that, if you knew
is so irregular that to the untrained eye it looks the starting conditions, and then the rules
pretty much random. Chaos is not complicated, governing any system, you could completely
patternless behaviour; it is much more subtle. predict the outcomes.

Chaos is apparently complicated, apparently In the 1970s and 80s it became increasingly clear
patternless, apparently behaviour that actually that this was wrong. It is impossible because you
has a simple, deterministic explanation. (p.130) can never define the starting conditions
with complete certainty.
Thus all real world behaviours are subject to
‘sensitivity to initial conditions’. From minuscule
divergences at the starting point, cataclysmic
differences may eventually emerge.
Stewart goes on to explain the concept of ‘phase
space’ developed by Henri Poincaré: this is an
imaginary mathematical space that represents all
possible motions in a given dynamic system
The phase space is the 3-D place in which
you plot the behaviour in order to create
the phase portrait. Instead of having to define
a formula and worrying about identifying
every number of the behaviour, the general
shape can be determined.
Much use of phase portraits has shown that
dynamic systems tend to have set shapes
which emerge and which systems move
towards. These are called attractors.
Thank you and Submitted by:

Sean Yves S. Antonio

God bless.