In Spring 2010, the course featured several experiments in chaotic scattering, including, pictured above, the scattering of a laser beam off a system of three cylinders.
The highlight of the class was an experiment to reproduce the chaotic dynamics of a soliton colliding with a localized defect (previously studied by Goodman and Haberman) in a simplified experimental setting: the motion of a ball rolling on a specially engineered surface.
This work was presented as a 📄 poster at the 2010 FACM Conference at NJIT and published in the journal CHAOS , with three students as co-authors.