Ithasbeenthirteenyearssincetheappearanceofthe?rsteditionofthisbook, and nine years after the second. Meanwhile, chaotic (or nonlinear) dynamics is established as an essential part of courses in physics and it still fascinates students, scientists and even nonacademic people, in particular because of the beauty of computer generated images appearing frequently in this ?eld. Quite generally, computers are an ideal tool for exploring and demonstr- ing the intricate features of chaotic dynamics. The programs in the previous editions of this book have been designed to support such studies even for the non-experienced users of personal computers. However, caused by the rapid development of the computational world, these programs written in Turbo Pascal appeared in an old-fashioned design compared to the up-to-date st- dard.Evenmoreimportant,thoseprogramswouldnotproperlyoperateunder recent versions of the Windows operating system. In addition, there is an - creasing use of Linux operating systems. Therefore, for the present edition, all the programs have been entirely rewritten in C++ and, of course, revised and polished. Two version of the program codes are supplied working under Windows or Linux operating systems. We have again corrected a few passage in the text of the book and added somemorerecentdevelopmentsinthe?eldofchaoticdynamics.Finallyanew program treating the important class of two-dimensional discrete (‘kicked’) systems has been added and described in Chap.13.
This new edition strives yet again to provide readers with a working knowledge of chaos theory and dynamical systems through parallel introductory explanations in the book and interaction with carefully-selected programs supplied on the accompanying diskette. The programs enable readers, especially advanced-undergraduate students in physics, engineering, and math, to tackle relevant physical systems quickly on their PCs, without distraction from algorithmic details. For the third edition of Chaos: A Program Collection for the PC, each of the previous twelve programs is polished and rewritten in C++ (both Windows and Linux versions are included). A new program treats kicked systems, an important class of two-dimensional problems, which is introduced in Chapter 13. Each chapter follows the structure: theoretical background; numerical techniques; interaction with the program; computer experiments; real experiments and empirical evidence; reference. Interacting with the many numerical experiments have proven to help readers to become familiar with this fascinating topic and even to enjoy the experience.
