Chaos is the study of the underlying determinism in the seemingly random phenomena that occur all around us. One of the best experimental demonstrations of chaos occurs in electrical circuits when the parameters are chosen carefully. We will show you how to construct such chaotic circuits for use in your own studies and demonstrations while teaching you the basics of chaos.This book should be of interest to researchers and hobbyists looking for a simple way to produce a chaotic signal. It should also be useful to students and their instructors as an engaging way to learn about chaotic dynamics and electronic circuits. The book assumes only an elementary knowledge of calculus and the ability to understand a schematic diagram and the components that it contains.You will get the most out of this book if you can construct the circuits for yourself. There is no substitute for the thrill and insight of seeing the output of a circuit you built unfold as the trajectory wanders in real time across your oscilloscope screen. A goal of this book is to inspire and delight as well as to teach.

This heavily illustrated book collects in one source most of the mathematically simple systems of differential equations whose solutions are chaotic. It includes the historically important systems of van der Pol, Duffing, Ueda, Lorenz, Rössler, and many others, but it goes on to show that there are many other systems that are simpler and more elegant. Many of these systems have been only recently discovered and are not widely known. Most cases include plots of the attractor and calculations of the spectra of Lyapunov exponents. Some important cases include graphs showing the route to chaos. The book includes many cases not previously published as well as examples of simple electronic circuits that exhibit chaos.No existing book thus far focuses on mathematically elegant chaotic systems. This book should therefore be of interest to chaos researchers looking for simple systems to use in their studies, to instructors who want examples to teach and motivate students, and to students doing independent study.

A recent development is the discovery that simple systems of equations can have chaotic solutions in which small changes in initial conditions have a large effect on the outcome, rendering the corresponding experiments effectively irreproducible and unpredictable. An earlier book in this sequence, Elegant Chaos: Algebraically Simple Chaotic Flows provided several hundred examples of such systems, nearly all of which are purely mathematical without any obvious connection with actual physical processes and with very limited discussion and analysis.In this book, we focus on a much smaller subset of such models, chosen because they simulate some common or important physical phenomenon, usually involving the motion of a limited number of point-like particles, and we discuss these models in much greater detail. As with the earlier book, the chosen models are the mathematically simplest formulations that exhibit the phenomena of interest, and thus they are what we consider 'elegant.'Elegant models, stripped of unnecessary detail while maximizing clarity, beauty, and simplicity, occupy common ground bordering both real-world modeling and aesthetic mathematical analyses. A computational search led one of us (JCS) to the same set of differential equations previously used by the other (WGH) to connect the classical dynamics of Newton and Hamilton to macroscopic thermodynamics. This joint book displays and explores dozens of such relatively simple models meeting the criteria of elegance, taste, and beauty in structure, style, and consequence.This book should be of interest to students and researchers who enjoy simulating and studying complex particle motions with unusual dynamical behaviors. The book assumes only an elementary knowledge of calculus. The systems are initial-value iterated maps and ordinary differential equations but they must be solved numerically. Thus for readers a formal differential equations course is not at all necessary, of little value and limited use.

Fractals are intricate geometrical forms that contain miniature copies of themselves on ever smaller scales. This colorful book describes methods for producing an endless variety of fractal art using a computer program that searches through millions of equations looking for those few that can produce images having aesthetic appeal. Over a hundred examples of such images are included with a link to the software that produced these images, and can also produce many more similar fractals. The underlying mathematics of the process is also explained in detail.Other books by the author that could be of interest to the reader are Elegant Chaos: Algebraically Simple Chaotic Flows (J C Sprott, 2010) and Elegant Circuits: Simple Chaotic Oscillators (J C Sprott and W J Thio, 2020).

This book deals with the bifurcation and chaotic aspects of damped and driven nonlinear oscillators. The analytical and numerical aspects of the chaotic dynamics of these oscillators are covered, together with appropriate experimental studies using nonlinear electronic circuits. Recent exciting developments in chaos research are also discussed, such as the control and synchronization of chaos and possible technological applications.

This volume describes the use of simple analog circuits to study nonlinear dynamics, chaos and stochastic resonance. The circuit experiments that are described are mostly easy and inexpensive to reproduce, and yet these experiments come from the forefront of nonlinear dynamics research. The individual chapters describe why analog circuits are so useful for studying nonlinear dynamics, and include theoretical as well as experimental results from some of the leading researchers in the field. Most of the articles contain some tutorial sections for the less experienced readers.The audience for this book includes researchers in nonlinear dynamics, chaos and statistical physics as well as electrical engineering, and graduate and advanced undergraduate students in these fields.

Chaos is considered as one of the most important concepts in modern science. It originally appeared only in computer simulation (the famous Lorenz equation of 1963), but this changed with the introduction of Chua's oscillator (1986) — a simple electronic circuit with the ability to generate a vast range of chaotic behaviors. With Chua's circuit, chaos became a physical phenomenon, readily understood and represented in mathematical language. Yet, even so, it is still difficult for the non-specialist to appreciate the full variety of behaviors that the system can produce.This book aims to bridge the gap. A gallery of nearly 900 “chaotic attractors” — some generated by Chua's physical circuit, the majority through computer simulation of the circuit and its generalizations — are illustrated as 3D color images, time series and fast Fourier transform algorithms. For interested researchers, also presented is the information necessary to replicate the behaviors and images. Finally, how the fractal richness can be plied to artistic ends in generating music and interesting sounds is shown; some examples are included in the DVD-ROM which comes with the book.The contents have also appeared in the International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos (2007).