OverviewofChapterOne.docVIP

Overview of Chapter One Two of our major goals throughout the text are to give a balanced approach to analytic, qualitative, and numerical techniques for studying solutions and to make the applications of the subject as transparent as possible. To accomplish these goals, the textbook continually introduces new models and modifies old ones using all three types of techniques whenever possible. Chapter 1 introduces, by example, all of these themes for first-order equations with emphasis placed on the topics. Chapter 1 divides naturally into two parts. Sections 1.1-1.5 constitute the introduction to modeling and to examples of analytic, qualitative, and numerical techniques along with the Existence and the Uniqueness Theorems (and their applications). These sections are essential both in material and in outlook to the rest of the text. Sections 1.6-1.9 discuss more specialized topics. In any case, Section 1.6 (phase lines) is very important to the development of systems in Chapter 2. 1.1 Modeling Via Differential Equations The main goal in this section is to demonstrate that differential equations arise naturally in real world systems and that solutions should be interpreted in terms of the original system. In building models, there is a connection between the assumptions made regarding the physical system and the individual terms in the differential equation. In studying solutions, the formula and/or the graph of a solution provides a prediction about the future behavior of the physical system under consideration. It also emphasizes that models are imperfect and should be criticized and improved if their predictions do not correspond to reality. DETools:Using HPGSolver to graph solutions to the logistic equation is a good way to introduce students to the use of technology in this course, but keep the slope field turned off until Section 1.3. Comments on selected exercises Exercises 1-2 begin the process of thinking qualitatively about differential equations