Course: Math 418
Instructor: Prof. Joe Borzellino
Time: MTRF 12:10–1:00pm, Mathematics & Science 38-219
Office Hours: MW 1:10pm-2:30pm, R 1:10pm-2:00pm (or by appt/email) in FOE 25-302
Phone: 756–5192
E–Mail: jborzell
Web Page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jborzell/index.html
Text: Strauss, Partial Differential Equations: An Introduction, 2^nd ed.
Chapters Covered: 1,2,4,5,6, (7,14)

A note on our textbook: Strauss' book is an excellent text that is used by many top tier universities. The book is written in a somewhat terse style which means that it covers quite a bit of content, but expects the reader (that's you & me) to be able to complete routine computations, to recall elementary calculus/ODE techniques and fill in small gaps that require arguments similar to those that have already been presented. The list of potential topics is quite expansive for an undergraduate book on PDEs, and as such, Strauss' book paints a more complete panorama of the subject of PDEs. The study of PDEs can be approached from a very theoretical or very applied point of view and different books reflect these different approaches. Strauss' book is slightly more theoretical overall, but also discusses applications and real world phenomena when appropriate. Here are some other references for books on PDEs (there are many others):

1. Haberman, Applied Partial Differential Equations (undergraduate, more applied)
2. O'Neil, Beginning Partial Differential Equations (undergraduate, less applied)
3. Logan, Applied Partial Differential Equations (undergraduate, more applied)
4. McOwen, Partial Differential Equations (graduate, much harder, more theoretical)
5. Churchill & Brown, Fourier Series and BVPs (undergraduate, more applied)