| Unit name | Mathematical Methods |
|---|---|
| Unit code | MATH30800 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Hogg |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
MATH 20402 Applied Partial Differential Equations 2. |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | School of Mathematics |
| Faculty | Faculty of Science |
Unit aims
The unit aims to provide a variety of analytical tools to solve linear partial differential equations (PDEs) arising from problems in physics and engineering, in particular: the wave equation; the diffusion equation; Laplace's equation (which has many, many applications, not least of which is potential theory).
Throughout the course, physical interpretations of the mathematical solutions found will be stressed as much as possible. Through this physical emphasis, the unit aims to foster the students' ability to model and solve mathematically problems of physical significance.
General Description of the Unit
This unit is concerned with analytical methods in mathematics. They have considerable intrinsic interest, but their importance for applications is the driving motive behind this lecture course, in which we will derive many pratcical methods for solving partial differential equations.omains.
The course starts by characterising first and second-order partial differential equations (PDE's), including classification of equations. The method of characteristics and their existence for different types of equations will be examined as will the use of characteristics for solving equations.
Fourier transforms, the natural extension of Fourier Series to an infinite domain, come next. They correspond to the 'spectrum' of physical signals such as light. However, we give more emphasis to the way they can be used as a tool for simplifying partial differential equations that lead to elegant methods for solving partial differential equations on infinite and semi-infinite domains with certain boundary conditions.
Following Fourier Transforms are Laplace Transforms which are shown to be particularly useful for solving certain initial-value PDE's (arising in many physical applications) for which Fourier Transforms are not well-suited. Their use is also shown to extend to solutions of ODE's. Evaluating inverse Laplace and Fourier transforms may entail integration in the complex plance and this course will develop techniques of contour integration for this purpose.
The wider insight that transforms give of a function's behaviour leads to the idea of generalised functions. The best known of these is Dirac's delta function: infinite at the origin and zero elsewhere - but that description is insufficient for a definition.
Green's function representations follow naturally, and their power is glimpsed as we interpret them as the inverses of differential operators, on both infinite and bounded domains. First Greens functions are developed for ODE's along with the theory behind their application to the solution of ODE's. In the final part of the course, Green's functions are introduced for PDE's illustrating their power for solving PDE's on unbounded domains in terms of arbitrary initial and boundary conditions.
Finally similarity solutions to partial differential equations will be introduced, showing how they emerge as exact solutions and how they often represent the long term behaviour of systems.
Relation to Other Units
This unit is a natural progression from Level 5 unit Applied Partial Differential Equations 2 and develops methods useful in a wide range of applied mathematics topics. The techniques introduced in this course are developed further in the Level 7 Asymptotics unit, and are used in Level 7 unit Advanced Fluid Dynamics.
Further information is available on the School of Mathematics website: http://www.maths.bris.ac.uk/study/undergrad/
Learning Objectives
At the end of the unit, the students should
Transferable Skills
Clear logical thinking, problem solving, modelling skills, i.e. the ability to transform a real physical problem into a tractable and understandable form.
The primary content of the course is taught using lectures, with some distributed notes. Extensive use of example sheets, problems classes and some computer software illustrates the techniques of problem solving developed in the course.
100% Examination.
Raw scores on the examinations will be determined according to the marking scheme written on the examination paper. The marking scheme, indicating the maximum score per question, is a guide to the relative weighting of the questions. Raw scores are moderated as described in the Undergraduate Handbook.
A good basic text, which covers most of the course, and has a lot of examples is:
More advanced and comprehensive texts are:
Various parts of the course are covered in:
