Marko Ćosić, Stewart’s Catastrophic Swing

Abstract
The standard approach to problem-solving in physics consists of identifying state variables of the system, setting differential equations governing the state evolution, and solving the obtained. The behavior of the system for different values of parameters can be examined only as a fourth step. On the contrary, the modern approach to studying dynamical systems relies on Morphological/Topological analysis which alleviates the necessity for the explicit solution of differential equations.

The stability analysis of the parabolic swing will demonstrate the merit of such an approach. It will be shown how to construct a qualitatively correct model of system dynamics that is surprisingly quantitatively correct as well. The sudden (catastrophic) change in the swing’s stability, caused by a slight change in the critical value of system parameters, will be linked to the drastic topological change of the corresponding phase-space portraits.

It will be shown that for a system’s parameters close to critical ones, the system’s behavior is identical to a specific simple universal prototype given by catastrophe theory. A short survey of the simplest elementary catastrophes will be given that represents the basis for applying catastrophe theory in other fields of science.