Post-Grant Reports

Title

Student-Faculty Collaborative Research Grant Report

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2-23-2016

Disciplines

Biological and Chemical Physics | Physics

Abstract

Complexity is the study of unexpected order or “phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects.”1 There are many natural systems that have been studied with the complexity lens: earthquakes, neuronal activity, protein folding, forest fires. More recently, physicists interested in complexity have begun looking at insect swarms. This project developed a simple computational model of fly swarms to search for evidence of complexity, particularly self-organized criticality.

1 Johnson, Neil F. (2009). Chapter 1: Two's company, three is complexity. In Simply complexity: A clear guide to complexity theory. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.

Related Resource

Complexity and Fly Swarms

Comments

This research was conducted as part of a Linfield College Faculty Development Grant in 2015, funded by the Office of Academic Affairs.

The student collaborator was Grant Cates.

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