Elementary Differential Equations with Boundary Value Problems (4th Edition) - Hardcover

C. H. Edwards

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0130113018 ISBN 13: 9780130113016

Publisher: Prentice Hall College Div, 1999

Synopsis

Maintaining a contemporary perspective, this strongly algebraic-oriented text provides a concrete and readable text for the traditional course in elementary differential equations that science, engineering, and mathematics readers take following calculus. Matters of definition, classification, and logical structure deserve (and receive here) careful attention for the first time in the mathematical experience of many of the readers. While it is neither feasible nor desirable to include proofs of the fundamental existence and uniqueness theorems along the way in an elementary course, readers need to see precise and clear-cut statements of these theorems, and understand their role in the subject. Appropriate existence and uniqueness proofs in the Appendix are included, and referred to where appropriate in the main body of the text. Applications are highlighted throughout the text. These include: What explains the commonly observed lag time between indoor and outdoor daily temperature oscillations?; What makes the difference between doomsday and extinction in alligator populations?; How do a unicycle and a two-axle car react differently to road bumps?; Why are flagpoles hollow instead of solid?; Why might an earthquake demolish one building and leave standing the one next door?; How can you predict the time of next perihelion passage of a newly observed comet?; Why and when does non-linearity lead to chaos in biological and mechanical systems?; What explains the difference in the sounds of a guitar, a xylophone, and a drum? Includes almost 300 computer-generated graphics throughout the text. This text, with enough material for 2 terms, provides a concrete and readable text for the traditional course in elementary differential equations that science, engineering, and mathematics readers take following calculus.

About this title

From the Publisher

Focused on the standard elementary techniques of solution of differential equations and the mathematical modeling of real-world situations, this book anticipates and addresses the questions and difficulties typically encountered by those studying the subject for the first time.

About the Author

C. Henry Edwards is emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Georgia. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee in 1960, and recently retired after 40 years of classroom teaching (including calculus or differential equations almost every term) at the universities of Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Georgia, with a brief interlude at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. He has received numerous teaching awards, including the University of Georgia's honoratus medal in 1983 (for sustained excellence in honors teaching), its Josiah Meigs award in 1991 (the institution's highest award for teaching), and the 1997 statewide Georgia Regents award for research university faculty teaching excellence. His scholarly career has ranged from research and dissertation direction in topology to the history of mathematics to computing and technology in the teaching and applications of mathematics. In addition to being author or co-author of calculus, advanced calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations textbooks, he is well-known to calculus instructors as author of The Historical Development of the Calculus (Springer-Verlag, 1979). During the 1990s he served as a principal investigator on three NSF-supported projects: (1) A school mathematics project including Maple for beginning algebra students, (2) A Calculus-with-Mathematica program, and (3) A MATLAB-based computer lab project for numerical analysis and differential equations students. David E. Penney, University of Georgia, completed his Ph.D. at Tulane University in 1965 (under the direction of Prof. L. Bruce Treybig) while teaching at the University of New Orleans. Earlier he had worked in experimental biophysics at Tulane University and the Veteran's Administration Hospital in New Orleans under the direction of Robert Dixon McAfee, where Dr. McAfee's research team's primary focus was on the active transport of sodium ions by biological membranes. Penney's primary contribution here was the development of a mathematical model (using simultaneous ordinary differential equations) for the metabolic phenomena regulating such transport, with potential future applications in kidney physiology, management of hypertension, and treatment of congestive heart failure. He also designed and constructed servomechanisms for the accurate monitoring of ion transport, a phenomenon involving the measurement of potentials in microvolts at impedances of millions of megohms. Penney began teaching calculus at Tulane in 1957 and taught that course almost every term with enthusiasm and distinction until his retirement at the end of the last millennium. During his tenure at the University of Georgia he received numerous University-wide teaching awards as well as directing several doctoral dissertations and seven undergraduate research projects. He is the author of research papers in number theory and topology and is the author or co-author of textbooks on calculus, computer programming, differential equations, linear algebra, and liberal arts mathematics.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall College Div
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0130113018
• ISBN 13: 9780130113016
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 697