Semester
Fall
Date of Graduation
1998
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MS
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
Chemistry
Committee Chair
Kenneth Showalter
Committee Co-Chair
Paul Jagodzinski
Committee Member
Charles Jaffe
Abstract
Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPA) based systems are probably the most often studied polymer gels due to their dramatic change in volume, swelling and deswelling. Since this system has the best response to pH between 4 and 7, the ferrocyanide-iodate-sulfite (FIS) reaction, which exhibits pH oscillations between 4 and 7.5 in a continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR), is a good candidate for studies of oscillatory gel systems.;This work also focused on two dynamical phenomena in the ruthenium catalyzed Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. One is self-organized criticality and the other is periodic forcing and how they can be studied with the BZ reaction. Self-organized criticality is the ability of a system to organize itself into a critical state as a response to random perturbations. Periodic forcing gives rise to waves being sustained in a subexcitable medium by imposing periodic perturbations above and below the excitability limit.
Recommended Citation
Seagraves, Lisa Elizabeth, "Perturbation studies of excitable media" (1998). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 94.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/94