Math 324: Introduction to Partial Differential Equations

•  Instructor:  Petronela Radu -- Avery Hall 239    Phone: 472- 9130     email: pradu@math.unl.edu
• Weekly Schedule: MWF 11:30 -- 12:20  Burnett Hall 102   Office Hours: Monday 2:30-4:00 Tuesday 12:00-2:00          
  
• Course Policies

       You must arrange your personal schedule to permit you to take the final exam at the regularly scheduled time.

• Maple: ODE and PDE Examples     Separation of variables
  
• Homework: The homework will be posted on the website and/or announced in class. 

           Homework 1 due Friday, September 12.
           Homework 2 due Wednesday, September 24.
           Homework 3 due Friday, October 3.
           Homework 4 due Wednesday, October 22.
           Homework 5 due Friday, October 31.
         
  What is going on:
                     09/01 -- 09/05      Conservation laws: physical interpretation, the method of characteristics.
                     09/08 -- 09/12      Conservation laws. Diffusion: physical interpretation, boundary conditions, PDE models in biology.                                                      Vibrations and Acoustics.   
                     09/15 --09/19       The heat and wave equation in higher dimensions: physical interpretation, boundary                                                                               conditions.                                                         
                 09/22 -- 09/26      Laplace's equation. Maximum principle. Classification of PDEs
                     09/29 -- 10/03      The Cauchy problem for the heat equation. The Cauchy Problem for the wave equation.
                     10/06 -- 10/10      Review for Exam 1. Exam 1. Ill Posed Problems
                     10/13 -- 10/17      Semi-Infinite Domains. Sources and Duhamel's Principle. Laplace Transform.
                     10/20 -- 10/24     Midsemester Break (Monday). Laplace Transform. Fourier Transform.
                     10/27 -- 10/31      Solving PDEs using computer algebra systems. Orthogonal Expansions.
 
Topics for the final exam

Announcements:

• Class on Monday 10/27 will be held in the Computer Lab (Avery 12).

• Date for Exam 1:  October 8, 2008
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The final letter grade will be computed based on the following table:

Final average	98-100	92-98	88-92	85-88	80-85	77-80	74-77	70-74	67-70	64-67	60-64	55-60	<55
Letter grade	A+	A	A-	B+	B	B-	C+	C	C-	D+	D	D-	F