Logistics:

• You must first consider the first option, Your Choice, below. A preliminary proposal, of length of about a page, of your choice for a project is due on November 22, 2009. If would be preferable to submit your proposal before this due date, if you have it ready. We will provide feedback on your proposal and will let you know if your proposal is accepted. If your proposal is rejected, then you must do the second choice, Professor's Suggestion.
• If you cannot come up with a suitable project idea, you must still submit a preliminary proposal, explaining your efforts in looking for a project idea. In this case you must complete the second choice, Professor's Suggestion, as your final project.
• You must turn in your final project to get a grade in the course. The Final Project Report is due at noon on December 15, 2009. You may submit your project assignments before the due dates, if you prefer.
• Your project reports should resemble a formal report; an introduction should set the project in context, the body should include the details of your findings, a conclusion, and references should round out your report. An appropriate length for your report should be about 8-12 pages.
• This is a project assignment, not just a homework problem. Do not be discouraged by the open-ended nature of the task. Use this oppotunity to showcase your imagination and skills.

Option 1: Your Choice

1. For this choice you are asked to construct a project of your own choosing. Talk to your professors (including us), TAs, consult books, journals, the library of equations in Phaser, etc. as possible sources. For example, you can find a model equation of your choice and simulate it on the computer to uncover a phenomenon; you can write code to implement some numerical algorithms. If you have access to some experimental data, you can try to fit the data to a dynamic model.

Option 2: Professor's Suggestion

1. Read the original paper Chaos in Three-species food chain by Alan Hastings and Thomas Powell, Ecology, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Jun., 1991), pp. 896-903.
2. Enter the differential equations (4-5) of this paper into PHASER.
3. Try to reproduce some of the computational experiments descibed in the paper and create similar illustrations. Interpret your computational findings in terms of biology.
4. You should explore the three-dimensional plotting facilities of PHASER to visualize the solutions.
5. You should consult other sources on this famous example.