MATLAB Is fortran 90 or matlab better for simulating non-linear dynamics (Chaos)?

[great_sushi]

I am going to be simulating damped driven oscillators for my project and I was wondering if someone could give me a definitive answer on the matter. I know MATLAB is more of a 'tool' than a language so I'm thinking the maths behind damped driven oscillators might be easier to implement into fortran 90.
If someone could give me a few pros and cons for the two and maybe more specifically to the simulations involved with damped driven oscillators that would be great.

Thank you!

 

[jfgobin]

Good Afternoon Great_Sushi,

Actually, both are applicable. It really boils down to what process you want.

Matlab has a powerful scripting language, is matrix oriented and has a ton of solvers and operators.

Fortran is a programming language, it probably has libraries to do operations on matrix, solvers and operators. Do these work with each other? Good question.

A third option would be Python with scipy and numpy: it's python with matlab-like extensions. If you add matplotlib, you have a complete solution for the processing AND graphing.

J.

 

[jedishrfu]

Another option would be Java and the Open Source Physics library:

www.compadre.org/osp

and for Duffing Chaos model as an example:

http://www.opensourcephysics.org/items/detail.cfm?ID=7860

 

[great_sushi]

OK thanks alot! I've decided to go for matlab... first day back of semester 2 and we're doing non-linear dynamics using matlab. I have a whole semester dedicated to my project, certainly panned out well hehe.

As for damped driven oscillators, can you recommend any good books on the subject of non-linear dynamics?