Intro to Chaos and Fractals Links

Smale Horseshoes

• A nice little Flash animation of stretching and folding.
• A colorful picture of the Smale map. From Chaos and Cosmos, by Peter H. Richter.

General Math/Physics references

• Mathworld. A huge site with explanations of almost any mathematical term imaginable. There are thousands and thousands of entries here.

Links more or less related to the course

• FAQ for sci.nonlinear. Lots of good, reliable information here. Might be a little on the technical side at times.

• The Chaos Hypertextbook. A nice introduction to chaos and fractals, at a level similar to the Devaney text we're using. The list of internet resources is extremely good. This is a very helpful index of around 200 links.

• Complexicon. This site, originally designed to accompany an exhibit at the explortorium science museum, is a very good glossary of some of the key terms in chaos and fractals. There are also brief biographies of many of the physicists and mathematicians who have done work in dynamical systems.

• James Gleick. Yup, the author of our book has a web page. He has some interesting articles up.

Links not related to the course

• Computational Beauty of Nature. Some good info, and some very cool java applets.

• Here are two great Cellular Automata pages:
  1. Exploring the Space of Cellular Automata. This site has a very easy-to-use interface that will let you produce tons of space-time diagrams. (To find this interfact, follow the elementray CA link or go here.
  2. The Primordial Soup Kitchen. This site was built by David Griffeath, a math prof at the University of Wisconsin. Lots of colorful applets here.

Web page maintained by dave@hornacek.coa.edu.