RESEARCH ARTICLE | JANUARY 01 1994
Chaotic and Fractal Dynamics: An Introduction for Applied
Scientists and Engineers
Francis Moon; Paul S. Linsay; A. John Mallinckrodt; Susan McKay
Comput. Phys. 8, 69 (1994)
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place for the authors to systematically The great strength of this book is side down. Controlling chaos is a major
incorporate such exercises. It is left to the wealth of experimental results engineering application that has been
the adventurous student, or teacher, to (many from Moon's laboratory) used to developing quickly. This is touched on
practice his or her newly found skills. illustrate the ideas. Pendulums with briefly in the book, and enough refer-
Finally, this book tries to cover, in multiple equilibria, buckling beams, ences are provided to allow the inter-
conventional print form, material that electronic circuits, rocking boats, even ested reader to pursue the topic.
evolves quite rapidly and is hard to keep the spatial chaos of a twisted tape meas- Without a physical basis, nonlinear
up to date with, even for those with their. ure appear here. They are accompanied dynamics would not merit the attention
fingers on the electronic-information- by approximate equations ofmotion and given to it in Jurassic Park. Moon's
exchange pulse. For instance, the appropriate references that allow the book makes sure that nonlinear dynam-
authors strongly recommend a public- reader to explore further at leisure. The ics does not degenerate into a mathe-
domain plotting package, ACE/gr, from complex dynamics that some of these matical dinosaur. •
the Oregon Institute of Science and systems display are additionally illus-
Technology, for two-dimensional plot- trated in the color plates.
ting. This reviewer dutifully ftp-ed to As befits a book aimed at applica- Books Received
the appropriate site and subdirectory tions, there is considerable discussion of
and found it to be ... empty. • techniques for observing and measuring AFirst Course in Computational
nonlinear systems. Moon covers tools Physics
such as the Poincare section, Lyapunov Paul L. DeVries, Wiley, New York, NY,
exponents, and dimensions (with the ap- 1994; ISBN 0-471-54869-3, 424 pp.,
Chaotic and Fractal propriate caveats) as well as the stand- hardcover, $55.95 ..
ard digital signal-processing technique
Dynamics: An Introduction of the fast Fourier transform. Diagrams The High Performance Fortran
for Applied Scientists and show how various experiments were Handbook
Engineers configured to display the Poincare sec- Charles H. Koelbel, David B. Loveman,
tion automatically and, in one clever Robert S. Schreiber, Guy L. Steele, Jr.,
Francis Moon and Mary E. Zosel, MIT Press, Cam-
16 December 2024 [Link]
case, to compute the fractal dimension
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,New York, of a two dimensional attractor using op- bridge, MA, 1994; ISBN 0-262-61094-
NY, [Link] 0-471-54571-6, tics. 9, 329 pp., softcover, $24.95; or ISBN
hardcover,$59.95. The theoretical ideas presented are 0-262-11185-3, 329 pp., hardcover,
meant to give a basic understanding of $45.00.
Reviewed by Paul S. Linsay the causes of chaotic dynamics. Stretch-
ing and folding are emphasized as the The Internet System Handbook
fundamental mechanism leading to cha- Dan C. Lynch and Marshall T. Rose,
fter a decade and a half of modem
A development, the popularity of
nonlinear dynamics and chaos is sky-
otic dynamics. These in turn are related
to horseshoe maps and homoclinic and
Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1993;
ISBN 0-201-56741-5, 789 pp., hard-
heteroclinic orbits of the underlying cover, $59.25.
rocketing. It seems, with only slight ex-
aggeration, that each week brings yet flow. The primary low-dimensional bi-
furcations of nonlinear dynamics are all
Mathematical Computation with
another new book on the subject. Al- Maple V: Ideas and Applications .
most all ofthese are heavily mathemati- discussed. Period doubling is given the
most complete treatment, because it ap- Thomas Lee, ed., Birkhauser, Cam-
cal texts that only lightly touch the
pears so prominently in one-dimen- bridge, MA, 1993; ISBN 0-8176-3724-
physical basis and reality of chaotic
sional systems. Feigenbaum's scaling 9, 199 pp., softcover, $34.50.
phenomena. The second edition of Cha-
otic and Fractal Dynamics by Francis relations are presented along with their Modern Elementary Particle Physics
Moon, a pioneer in experimental studies implications. A simplified development Gordon Kane, Addison-Wesley, Read-
of chaos, is a welcome balance. This of the period-doubling renormalization ing, MA, 1993; ISBN 0-201-62460-5,
textbook for advanced undergraduates properties is used to motivate the scal- 368 pp., softcover, $24.75.
in applied science and engineering ing.
spends a great deal of time on the many Two topics of importance to engi- Stereo Computer Graphics and Other
experimental results that have shown neering design are touched on. Fractal- True 3D Technologies
the physical importance of chaos, while basin boundaries produce a situation in David F. McAllister, ed., Princeton
concisely developing the theoretical which the final attractor ofthe system is Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1993; ISBN
background in nonlinear dynamics nec- uncertain, which is in addition to the 0-691-08741-5, 267 pp., hardcover,
essary to understand their fascinating usual sensitive dependence on initial $75.00.
and complicated behavior. contitions. The dynamics of a ship are
much like that of a pendulum with two Visual BASIC for DOS: Building
Paul Linsay is aprincipal research scientist at attracting equilibria. The designer of a Scientific and Technical Applications
the MIT Plasma Fusion Center, Cambridge, ship would certainly like to be sure that James W. Cooper, Wiley, New York,
MA. He has spent the last decade doing experi- small changes in wave motion do not NY, 1993; ISBN 0-471-59772-4, 401
mental studies ofchaotic phenomena. result in equilibrium with the boat up- pp., softcover, $34.95.
COMPUTERS IN PHYSICS, VOL. 8,NO.1, JANIFEB 1994 69
