Course Content
More or less everything worth describing can be described by partial differential equations. While there is not much useful that one can say about partial differential equations in general, one can say a fair amount about broad classes of partial differential equations, and a great deal about some particular partial differential equations. Luckily these include the differential equation most relevant to physics.
The course will cover standard introductory material from the theory of partial differential equations. The approach will be fairly standard, except that I will emphasise the role of symmetry groups somewhat more than is usual.
The main emphasis this term will be on the three basic examples: the Wave, Heat and Laplace equations, in the smallest number of dimensions in which they are interesting.
Text
There is no official textbook for the course. I am more or less following Walter Strauss' book, but not very closely.
Exams
There will be single exam during the usual annual exam period, worth 90% of your course mark. It will be divided into two parts, marked separately. Students who do only the first term will, of course, only take the first part of the exam. We are not allowed to announce exam dates and locations on course web pages, but I will give a link here to the official exam timetable once it is finalised.
I have prepared a practice exam. The format is the same as for the real exam, i.e. "attempt three of four". The topics are similar to those of the real exam, although the content of the questions, of course, is not.
More information about the content and format of the exam will appear here as the exam period draws nearer.
Assignments
Assignments will count for 10% of your course mark. They will be posted here, roughly weekly, and will be due at the beginning of the Tuesday 5:00pm lecture. They will not be distributed in class. Solutions will be posted here once the assignment has been corrected.
| Assignment | Due | Version | Problems | Solutions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 October 2012 | Id: 3425-f2012-1.m4,v 1.3 2012/10/09 16:54:42 john Exp john | PS PDF | PS PDF |
| 2 | 16 October 2012 | Id: 3425-f2012-2.m4,v 1.3 2012/10/12 12:11:10 john Exp john | PS PDF | PS PDF |
| 3 | 30 October 2012 | Id: 3425-f2012-3.m4,v 1.2 2012/10/26 15:35:09 john Exp john | PS PDF | PS PDF |
| 4 | 23 November 2012 | Id: 3425-f2012-4.m4,v 1.3 2013/02/15 10:01:35 john Exp john | PS PDF | PS PDF |
Tutorials
There are no tutorials scheduled for this course.
Past Courses
Here are the web pages for past versions of the course. Keep in mind that these may differ in notation or content from the current version.