Student Research:
Although teaching has been my top priority, I have also maintained moderate research activity. I believe that research has an essential role in teaching in that instructors can bring some excitement and stimulation gained through research to their students. For me, research has been essential to my life as an educator.
My research interests include nonlinear dynamics and chaos, time series application to data, numerical simulation of engineering and physics problems, applets for simulations to be used in class as demonstrations.
Currently I am working on time series data on temperature, precipitation and snow fall in collaboration with Dr. Mark Simpson. I am also working on a problem which is aimed at the determination of the geodesics in a special geometry simulated by temperature gradient on a hot plate. This hot plate problem is related to relativity and curved space time.
I am looking for a few good students to work on these problems. In working on some of these projects students will learn to use such softwares as Mathematica or MathLab. Send me an e-mail if you are interested in talking to me about these projects.
My past experience with student research includes:
1) Work with gifted and talented students to prepare simulations to be used in class (see my web page for an example).
2) Work with students toward student publication ( 1991-1999 at Oklahoam School of Science and Mathematics). Some of this work is published, some under consideration.
Hall Burch: Mapping of Electric Field Lines for Arbitrary Pointlike Charges, a software program for DOS, 1992.
Bob McGrew: An applet for projectile motion (see my web page for this), 1998 at the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics
Bob McGrew and in collaboration with Wei Chen: Motion of a Multi-Particle System in a Symmetric Configuration, a paper resulted from mentorship project at the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, submitted for review,1998.
Scott Wise, Josh Mercer, and Cory Schneberger: An Application of Engineering Problem Solving Techniques, a paper resulted from mentorship project at the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, submitted for review, 1999.