Exercises on Initial Value Problems for Ordinary Differential Equations

Exercise 1

Show that for the integration case \(f(t, u) = f(t)\), Euler’s method is the same as the composite left-hand endpoint rule, as in the section Definite Integrals, Part 2.

Exercise 2

A) Verify that for the simple case where \(f(t, u) = f(t)\), the explicit trapezoid method gives the same result as the composite trapezoid rule for integration.

B) Do one step of this method for the canonical example \(du/dt = ku\), \(u(t_0) = u_0\). It will have the form \(U_1 = G U_0\) where the growth factor \(G\) approximates the factor \(g=e^{kh}\) for the exact solution \(u(t_1) = g u(t_0)\) of the ODE.

C) Compare to \(G=1+kh\) seen for Euler’s method.

D) Use the previous result to express \(U_i\) in terms of \(U_0=u_0\), as done for Euler’s method.

Exercise 3 (a lot like Exercise 2)

A) Verify that for the simple case where \(f(t, u) = f(t)\), explicit midpoint method gives the same result as the composite midpoint rule for integration (same comment as above).

B) Do one step of this method for the canonical example \(du/dt = ku\), \(u(t_0) = u_0\). It will have the form \(U_1 = G U_0\) where the growth factor \(G\) approximates the factor \(g=e^{kh}\) for the exact solution \(u(t_1) = g u(t_0)\) of the ODE.

C) Compare to the growth factors \(G\) seen for Euler and explicit trapezoid methods, and to the growth factor \(g\) for the exact solution.

Exercise 4

A) Apply Richardson extrapolation to one step of Euler’s method, using the values given by step sizes \(h\) and \(h/2\).

B) This should give a second order accurate method, so compare it to the above two methods.

Exercise 5

A) Verify that for the simple case where \(f(t, u) = f(t)\), this gives the same result as the Composite Simpson’s Rule for integration.

B) Do one step of this method for the canonical example \(du/dt = ku\), \(u(t_0) = u_0\). It will have the form \(U_1 = G U_0\) where the growth factor \(G\) approximates the factor \(g=e^{kh}\) for the exact solution \(u(t_1) = g u(t_0)\) of the ODE.

C) Compare to the growth factors \(G\) seen for previous methods, and to the growth factor \(g\) for the exact solution.

Exercise 6

Write a formula for \(U_h\) and \(e_h\) if one starts from the point \((t_i, U_i)\), so that \((t_i + h, U^h)\) is the proposed value for the next point \((t_{i+1}, U_{i+1})\) in the approximate solution — but only if \(e_h\) is small enough!

Exercise 7

Implement the error control version of the explicit trapezoid method from section on Error Control and Variable Step Sizes and test on the two familiar examples

\[\begin{split} \begin{split} du/dt &= Ku \\ &\text{and} \\ du/dt &= K(\cos(t) - u) - \sin(t) \end{split} \end{split}\]

(\(K=1\) is enough.)


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