Perturbaciones y acoplamientos en un oscilador no lineal: el caso del oscilador salino

Abstract

Nonlinear Dynamics has had a considerable boom in recent decades. This growth in partially explained because of its scope not being restricted to physics or mathematics, but extends to biology, medicine, economy, finances, robotics, and many other areas. Among the characteristic phenomena that may occur in these systems is the emergence of non-linear oscillations with a robust attractor cycle, i.e., phenomena that repeat on a regular basis and when are disturbed they return to their natural cycle of oscillation. A very important procedure to study them is the analysis of their behavior when are periodically forced. Despite the importance of these phenomena, their study is absent from the majority of undergraduate physics programs. A reason for that could be the complexity of many experimental set up employed to analyze them. This article presents a very simple experimental device: the saline oscillator, which allows a clear, direct and highly visual way for teaching the perturbation effect on nonlinear oscillators.