WarmUp Exercise #10, 9/20  (Assignment Due 9/22)

One of the problems we will be looking at Wednesday is that of a van der Pol oscillator.  This oscillator has the following form

and was first used to study nonlinear oscillations in vacuum tubes in early radios.

  1. What makes this a non-linear equation?
  2. Look at the "damping" term.  What is different about it? Be explicit and relate to the ( ).
  3. By considering your answer to (b) predict what the phase space plot for this oscillator will look like.
     

Answer in the form below, a short answer for each is fine. 
This report is due by 8:00 am Wednesday morning.

Your Name: 

For this assignment, I was:  of my answers.