Order Now from World Scientific Buy from World Scientific Buy from Amazon.com Buy from Barnes & Noble World Scientific, 2023 · xiv + 310 pages ISBN 978-981-126-356-9 (hardcover) The sequel to Elegant Chaos: the simplest models that capture real physical phenomena From the harmonic oscillator to thermostats, shock waves and many-body molecular dynamics How time-reversible mechanics gives rise to irreversible thermodynamics A computer search and decades of molecular dynamics arrive at the same equations Needs only elementary calculus — no formal differential equations course required

Elegant Simulations From Simple Oscillators to Many-Body Systems J. C. Sprott, William G. Hoover, and Carol G. Hoover Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Wisconsin–Madison About the Book 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. In this book, the authors 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 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 the authors 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 author (JCS) to the same set of differential equations previously used by another (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. Contents 1. Linear Oscillators 2. Nonlinear Oscillators 3. Coupled Oscillators 4. Thermostatted Oscillators 5. Two-Dimensional Oscillators 6. Map and Walk Analogs of Flows 7. From Small Systems to Large 8. Thermodynamics and Molecular Dynamics 9. Mechanics of Nonequilibrium Fluids 10. Micro and Macro Time-Reversibility 11. Attractions in Molecular Dynamics

Last updated October 25, 2026