Investigation of chaos in the absence of programming skill

Abstract

Studying chaotic systems at all levels of physics education can highly motivate students to learn physics. In this paper two simple systems, the Duffing oscillator and compass needle motion, are presented, which were used in a high school and in a university setting for teaching the basic ideas of chaotic motion. Studying both systems can begin with their simple mechanical models, which connect the mathematical description to tangible reality for the students. To surmount the mathematical difficulties of the theoretical treatment of the models, freeware software, the Dynamics Solver (DS), was applied. It will be shown how DS can facilitate students’ first steps toward chaotic systems both at college and high school levels. Downloadable materials in ZIP format, related to this paper, can be found in our web page ( http://csodafizika.hu/ds_girepmptl ).