Ordinary differential equations in Python

Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) are pervasive in science and engineering. You can solve these in Python with the scipy library. This booklet shows you how to solve first-order initial value ordinary differential equations, systems of ODEs, and higher order ODEs. You will see how to use events during the integration to find roots, minima/maxima in the solutions, and specific solution values. You will learn about quantitative and qualitative approaches to solving these. You will also learn about some things that can go wrong in solving ODEs. We also look at one example of solving a boundary value differential equation.

Updated July 17, 2024 for Python 3.11

This booklet assumes you are familiar and comfortable with the material in the Introduction and Intermediate Python computations in science and engineering. You should also be comfortable writing functions and with data structures.