The still growing interest in chaotic dynamics in physics and the friendly receipt
given to the first edition encouraged us to prepare a second edition of this book.
During the last years, we observed an increasing introduction to chaotic
(or nonlinear) dynamics already in basic courses in physics. Here the computer
is often used as an ideal tool for the demonstration of chaotic phenomena in
computer "experiments" during lectures. More and more students realize that
they can benefit from the simultaneous interaction with computer programs and
reading of texts, provided that specialized and easy to use programs with many
suggestions for such "experiments" exist. The resonance from many students
and colleagues gave us the impression that our collection of programs helps the
students to explore the highly non-trivial behavior of dynamical systems.
We have taken the opportunity to correct some minor errors and to clarify
a few points in the text of the book, but most of the program codes of the
first edition remained unchanged. However, the rapid development of computer
operating systems made it necessary to modify some of the computer codes
and to change the installation routine. The programs in this collection were
originally written to run within the operating system DOS. Now they have
been tested to run under Windows 95 and NT as well. Because of the increase
of speed, the computing times are noticeably reduced and much more elaborate
numerical experiments may be performed in acceptable times.
research associates who contributed consid-