Classical Mathematical Methods in Engineering

MATH 4581 (sections AU, AG, and Q) Spring 2026

MW Lecture 12:30-1:45, Allen Sus Education, Room 110
INSTRUCTOR: John McCuan
Office hours MW 2:00-3:00 or by appointment
email:   mccuangt23 proton.me

Text:

Applied Partial Differential Equations, Fourth Ed. by Richard Haberman, Prentice-Hall

Purchasing of the text is recommended but not strictly required; any edition should do, but the fourth edition is the one I will use. According to my recollection, some earlier editions were a bit better, so if you can find one of those you might get it...also for some diversity. I will type up and post assignments, so you should be able to get precise problem statements without the text. If you need additional reading or review, I will mostly tell you to obtain and look at a copy of Haberman. I may type up some notes of my own from time to time. Of course, you are also encouraged to listen to the lectures and discuss any questions you have (with me or others) during the lectures or during office hours. Private discussions among students during the lecture are not particularly encouraged, but I really like for students to ask good questions. Beyond that, any decent calculus text (Salas, Hille, and Etgen, Thomas, Schwarz, Stewart, Anton,...) should provide adequate prerequisite reading, assuming of course you know stuff like algebra and trigonometry (maybe a little arithmetic). Above all don't worry. You don't have to be a math whiz when you start my course...just when you finish it.

Supplemental Texts:

Fourier Series and Orthogonal Functions by Harry Davis, Dover

Also, most any decent text with a title like Advanced Engineering Math should cover all the material in this course (more or less). Some recommended authors in this category might be Peter O'Neill, Erwin Kreyszig, Erich Zauderer, and David Zill.

As mentioned above it is nice when some questions are asked and there is some discussion during the lecture time. With that in mind, let me suggest the following: There are about 28 class meetings and about 50 in-class students. Pick for yourself one of the 28 class meetings, and try to have some interesting question to ask on that day. If you're a distance learning student, send me a question on a Thursday or Friday for me to try to address in class on Monday.

This course is an introduction to the basic partial differential equations of nineteenth century physics and engineering: The heat equation, the wave equation, and Laplace's equation. In the process of understanding the basic properties of solutions of these equations, we will study series methods (eigenfunction expansion) and transform methods. Fourier series are interesting by themselves, so just that topic should be worth the cover price for an engineer.

Syllabus

Lecture Schedule and Homework

Course activities:

There will be approximately 10 assignments over the course of the semester. Their weights and names will be approximately as follows:

Assignment 1 10% (ODE review)
Assignment 2 10% (Fourier series)
Assignment 3 10% (linearity and norms)
Assignment 4 10% (ODE Review/Exam 1)
Assignment 5 10% (Heat Equation)
Assignment 6 10% (Laplace's Equation)
Assignment 7 10% (Elliptic and Parabolic PDE Review/Exam 2)
Assignment 8 10% (Wave Equation)
Assignment 9 10% (hyperbolic PDE Review/Exam 3)
Assignment 10 (Final Exam) 10%

No special note or distinction need be made concerning assignments designated as "exams." This is purely administrative. There are no in-class exams. You may work on an assignment any time after it is made available on the schedule page. You may turn in your work on an assignment at any time after an upload link for that assignment has appeared on canvas until the end of the semester. If you want an assignment graded, turn in your work on canvas before the due date.

(Below 60% C; 60-85% B; 86-100% A)

Additional Materials:

Administrative Details
Including grading policy.



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