DAMP Physics, IITB

Instructor name:  Punit Parmananda Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  None Course Content:  Simple Harmonic oscillations, Damped oscillations, Forced oscillations, Logistic Map, Noise vs chaos, Bifurcation, Feiganbaum Constants, Dynamics in 1,2,3 dimensions, Lyapunov constants, Experimental tools for research in Non Linear Dynamics Books:  Steve Strogatz Lectures:  Lectures are extremely interactive. It was never boring. Prof expects 100 % attendance. Usually teaches from slides. But slides are just guides to the flow of the lecture. They are not notes. The prof sometimes assumes that students know things which they actually do not. He is good at getting the intuitive idea across, but sometimes it feels vague as no solid mathematical basis is established. Assignments:  Almost no assignments. Prof gives some coding assignments but they are not forced and are not considered for grading. All tutorials are discussed in the ...

Instructor Name Amitabha Nandi Course Type Honours/Elective (Core for DD) Course overview One Dimensional Flow, Bifurcations, Phase diagrams, Limit Cycles, Lorenz Equations, Chaotic Attractors, One Dimensional Maps, introduction to renormalization group theory Prerequisites No formal or informal prerequisites Credit distribution There was one quiz (15%), a midsem (30%) and an endsem (40%). Apart from that, there was a project, worth 15% of the grade. The topic could either be chosen by the student (after approval from the prof), or from a pool of suggested topics. Feedback on Lectures The lectures were extremely interesting, it really felt like the professor was giving his best. The lectures were blackboard based, so fast notetaking soon became the norm. Feedback on tutorials, assignments and exams The assignments were fairly tricky, towards the end. All the assignments were ungraded. Class notes (no printed material) was allowed in all the exams....