Reviews for Future Directions of Nonlinear Dynamics in Physical and Biological Systems

The average rating for Future Directions of Nonlinear Dynamics in Physical and Biological Systems based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-12-11 00:00:00 Charlie Victor A week or so ago I wrote a brief, embittered, caffeine-fueled invective against this book: Mechanical Vibrations: Theory and Application to Structural Dynamics, 2E, which I referred to as "hardcore formalism porn." I was frustrated because I had just gotten back from a flight training program for the duration of which my professor had granted me a course extension; the condition was that I would have 4 days when the program was over to learn the entire course and take a final. Clearly, my objective here was the rapid assimilation of knowledge, formerly known as cramming. And that Geradin book is like a lead brick! You can stare at a page for an hour and have no earthly idea what he's trying to say. So, I went out, desperate, and dumped a bunch more money I don't have on this textbook. I'm glad I did. Now, my complaint here is not going to be that Geradin inhibits cramming and Shabana enables it. That would be a weak soapbox to stand on. Actually, the Master's program I'm in is a rather unique distance learning option at a major university in which I remotely watch all the lectures, and turn in the same assignments and exams as the physically matriculated students. At first blush, it sounds like this would be not much different at all from attending on campus; but in practice, the differences are vast. My complete lack of interaction with professors and peers means that I'm basically teaching myself all the course material, with the lectures sort of providing boundaries to what I'll be responsible for. Hence, I spend many, many hours alone with my books and notes. In my opinion, this gives me a rather unique perspective on textbook pedagogy. And I begin to form very strong opinions about the techniques of various authors. In my experience, one of the principal balances that must be struck in a hard science text is between rigor and clarity. This is really an analysis of notation more than anything; because, I mean, I can write down the most general expression ever -- something that holds true for all particles and systems at all moments of time in the expanding universe, and at both relativistic and quantum scales -- but if you can't understand what I'm trying to say because of the statement's notational complexity, it does you no good. This is Geradin's tragic flaw. His notation is extremely rigorous, and as a result it is nearly impossible to follow his arguments. I want to give one fairly simple example. When they get to the excitation of continuous systems, Geradin and Shabana both devote a section to the orthogonality of the vibrational eigenmodes, which is an important, if standard, result. The conclusion that Shabana comes to is the following: as long j does not equal k, Ok, makes sense, right? The inner products of the eigenfunctions, and of the derivatives of the eigenfunctions, which are with some geometric and material functions which characterize the system (E,A, etc), vanish over the system volume. Later, Shabana shows the equally simple j=k case. When Geradin comes to essentially the exact same result, he writes: Really, man? Really? I mean it's great that you've taken a simple expression and completely generalized it to all systems. Sure, I could take this exact same equation and apply it to the vibration of 11-dimensional membranes folded up inside space-time. And that's cool. But for someone trying to understand how structural vibrations are studied and engineered, this is excessively dense. Well, let me say it another way. This kind of general expression is great for a reference book, or even a reference section of your own book. But in the development of principles that are not intuitive, there is far too much cognitive load demanded by your notation alone. It inhibits the conceptualization of the dynamics themselves. I appreciated Shabana's book because it seemed like it was written with a reader in mind. Shabana wants you to understand. Geradin's book seems to have Geradin in mind. He wants to write out stuff he already understands in the most general notation possible. Sure, the book is rigorous and comprehensive. But it's not a teaching tool.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-11 00:00:00 Staci Ramos I mean all of these books are dry, but Geodynamics by Turcotte and Schubert is a great reference book for any geophysicist/geologist interested in modeling or mantle dynamics/geophysics. I'd also recommend The Solid Earth by Fowler.