CHAPTER 5: FROM VIOLINS TO VIDEOS

2 Discipline of Mathematics
 Pure Mathematics
 Applied Mathematics- anything useful
 Carl Friedrich Gauss
 Number Theory “the queen of mathematics”
 Ceres- first asteroid to be discovered
 Virtuoso Performance
 Major development in surveying, telegraphy, and the understanding of magnetism
 Television- most powerful application; an invention that arguably has changed our world more than any other
 Begins in 16th century, w/ the problem of vibrating violin string
 Frequency of vibration-Greeks
 Nodes- places along the length of the string which remain stationary
 Number of nodes is an integer and the nodes are equally space
 Standing waves- waves move up and done
 Amplitude of the wave- determines the tone’s loudness
 Sinusoidal- shaped like a sine curve, a repetitive wavy line of rather elegant shape that arises in trigonometry
 In 1714, Brook Taylor (English mathematician)- fundamental vibrational frequency of a violin string
 In 1746, Jean Le Rond d’ Alembert (Frenchman)- many vibrations of violin string are not sinusoidal standing waves
 In 1748, Leonhard Euler (Swiss mathematician)- “wave equation”
 Wave equation- partial differential equation (not only in time but also in space)
 Rightward-traveling wave/Leftward-traveling wave
 Daniel Bernoulli
 Boundary condition
 William Gilbert (physician of Elizabeth I) -described Earth as a huge magnet
 Benjamin Franklin (1752)- lighting is a form of electricity
 Luigi Galvani- electrical sparks caused a dead frog’s leg muscles
 Alessandro Volta- invented the first battery
 Michael Faraday (English Physicist and chemist)- employed in royal institution in London; theory of electromagnetism
 Magnet- can produce electric current in 1831
 Electricity and magnetism are different = electromagnetism
 James Clerk Maxwell
 Heinrich Hertz (German Physicist)
 Guglielmo Marconi- first wireless telegraphy in 1895 and first transatlantic radio signal in 1901

CHAPTER 6: BROKEN SYMMETRY

 Pierre Curie & Marie Curie (Great Physicist)- Radioactivity

 Spontaneous symmetry breaking
 Symmetry- mathematical concept; allows us to classify diff. types of regular pattern
 Bilateral symmetry- if you reflect the left half in a mirror, then u obtain the right half (e.g. human body)
 Reflection- mathematical concept (transformation)
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SYMMETRY
 Reflections/flips
 Rotations/turns
 Translations/slides
 1958 B.P. Belousov (Russian Chemist)- discovered chemical reaction that simultaneously formed patterns
 1963 A.M. Zhabotinskii (Russian Chemist)- modified belousov work
 Jack Cohen (British Reproductive Biologist) & Arthur Winfree (American Mathematical Biologist)- simple chemicals
 Buckminsterfullerene
 Icosahedron
 Tetrahedron
 Centrosome was discovered in 1887
 Centriole
 Microtubules
 Alpha- and beta-tubulin
 Viruses- often symmetric
 Albert Einstein- "invariance principle" "principle of relativity"
4 FUNDAMENTAL FORCES OF NATURE
 Gravity
 Electromagnetism
 Strong nuclear interactions
 Weak nuclear interactions
 Wolfgang Pauli- "The lord is a weak left-hander"

There is an ideal mathematical universe in which all of the fundamental forces are related in a perfectly symmetry manner-but
we don't live in it.

CHAPTER 7: THE RHYTHM OF LIFE

 Gaits- the default patterns of motion that occur when conscious control is not operating in four legged animals
 In 1870s rail road tycoon Leland Stanford bet $25,000
 Eadweard Muybridge (Edward Muggeridge)- photographer; photographed the diff. phases of the gait of the horse; founded
both science and an art
 Zoetrope- mechanical device that display a “moving pictures”
 Gait Analysis- branch of mathematical biology that grew up around the questions “how do animals move?” & “why do they
move like that?”
Mathematical concept of oscillator- a unit whose natural dynamic causes it to repeat the same cycle of behavior over and over
again
Biology hooks together huge “circuits” of oscillators, which interact with each other to create complex patterns of behavior.
“Coupled Oscillator Networks” are the unifying theme of this chapter.
Why do systems oscillate at all?
-this is the simplest way you can do if you don’t want, or are not allowed, to remain still
 Eberhard Hopf (German Mathematician)- in 1942 he found a general mathematical condition that guarantees such behavior
 Hopf Bifurcation- the idea is to approximate the dynamics of the original system in a particular simple way, to see weather a
periodic wobble arises in this simplified system

2 TYPES OF LINE SYMMETRY

 Translations- if you observe the motion of the system and then wait for some fixed interval and observe the motion of
the system again, you will see exactly the same behaviour
 Reflections- correspond to reversing the direction in which time flows, more subtle and philosophically difficult concept
 Periodic Oscillations- if you wait for an interval equal to the period, you see the exactly the same thing; it had time
translation symmetry
 CPG (Central Pattern Generator)
 LEG (Locomotive Excitation Generator)
 Milton Hildebrand (American Zoologist)- in 1965 noticed that most gaits possess a degree of symmetry
7 MOST COMMON QUADRUPEDAL GAITS
 Trot- legs are in effect linked in diagonal pairs
 Pace- links the movements fore and aft
 Bound- front legs hit the ground together, then the back legs
 Walk- more complex but equally rhythmic pattern: front left, back right, front right, beck left, then repeat
 Rotary Gallop- front legs hit the ground almost together, but right is slightly later than the left
 Transverse Gallop- sequenced is reversed for the rear legs
 Canter- even more curious: first front left, then back right, then the other two legs simultaneously
 Pronk- 4 legs move simultaneously
2 TYPICAL OSCILLATION PATTERNS
 In-phase pattern- both oscillators behave identically
 Out-of-phase pattern- both oscillators behave identically except for a half period phase difference
2 KINDS OF GALLOP
 Rotary Gallop- mixture of pace and bound
 Transverse Gallop- mixture of bound and trot
 1981 D.F. HOYT & R.C. TAYLOR
 1935 HUGH SMITH (AMERICAN BIOLOGIST) “SYNCHRONOUS FLASHING OF FIREFLIES”-article
 1990 RENATO MIROLLO & STEVEN STROGATZ- synchrony is the rule for mathematical models
 1975 CHARLES PESKIN (AMERICAN BIOLOGIST)
 CHAPTER 8: DO DICE PLAY GOD

 Isaac Newton
 Pierre-Simon de Laplace- great mathematical astronomer (1812- Analytic Theory of Probabilities)
 The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy- science fiction novel by Douglas Adams in 1979 [in which the philosophers
Majikthise and Vroomfondel instruct the super computer "Deep Thought" to calculate the answer to the great question of
life, universe and everything]
 God plays dice: it seems more a universe in which dice play God
 Nonlinear dynamics popularly known as "Chaos Theory"
- certainly creating a revolution in the way we think about order and disorder, law and chance, predictability and
randomness
 Quantum Mechanics
 David Bohm (Princeton Physicist)
 Classical Mechanics
 Decoherence- causes sufficiently large quantum systems
 Lateral thinking
 Dynamical systems collective (1978, UC at Santa Cruz)
 Perfect determinism
 Sensitivity to initial conditions/ "The Butterfly Effect" - phenomenon
 Henri Poincaré (French Mathematician)
 Phase Space- plane
 Phase Portrait- set of swirling curves
 Attractors- geometric shapes
 Strange attractors- curious fractual shapes
 Chaos- mathematical phenomenon
 Prediction- foretelling the future; describing in advance what the outcome of an experiment will be
 Period Doubling Cascade
 Mitchell Feigenbaum (Physicist)- delta sign
 Hydrazine- fuel that use in space satellites
 Chaotic Control:
 William Ditto
 Alan Garfinkel
 Jim Yorke