Love Affairs and Differential Equations

In 1988, Steven Strogatz of Harvard University looked at a pair of star-crossed lovers to illustrate a math concept, "coupled ordinary differential equations." That sounds complicated, but the way he explained it with an example, even I can understand.

Romeo is in love with Juliet, but in our version of this story, Romeo is a fickle lover. The more Juliet loves him, the more he begins to dislike her. But when she loses interest, his feelings for her warm up. She, on the other hand, tends to echo him: her love grows when he loves her, and turns to hate when he hates her.

Then there's a math formula, but you can see where this is going, as if it were a movie.  

The sad outcome of their affair is, of course, a never ending cycle of love and hate; their governing equations are those of a simple harmonic oscillator. At least they manage to achieve simultaneous love one-quarter of the time.

Does that remind you of anyone you know? The original paper is here. The equation can be found in various forms in math departments all across academia. -via Cliff Pickover


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When I was three, my parents took me to see Holiday on Ice, and all I remember was my dad trying to get me to eat cotton candy. I knew cotton was what was stuffed in the top of the aspirin bottle, and I'd already tried to eat it. No way was I going to fall for Dad's tricks!
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I'm a boomer and this is a story from the 1920's that my mother and her brother (my uncle) told me. When they were kids they believed that grasshoppers would spit molasses. They would each catch a grasshopper in their hands and shake them really hard until the bugs vomited onto their hands. While shaking the bugs they would yell "Grasshopper, grasshopper, give me some molasses!" Then they would open there hands and the bugs would flee and they would lick up the grasshopper juice. yeah... fun times.
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