Literature for ODE undergrad class

Question

I am teaching a undergrad ODE class. I am looking for some good (introductory) articles with applications of ODE's. In particular I would like some motivations for some special functions (Legendre, Bessel, Hermite, Chebyshev, etc). Unfortunately the book we are using (Boyce-DiPrima) doesn't motivate them.

I found some recent applications of spherical harmonics to computer graphics which seem very interesting. However, I think the level is quite high for my class.

Thanks,

Answer 1

See the web page Student Projects in Differential Equations maintained by David Arnold at College of the Redwoods. I remember seeing this back in the late 1990s when I taught an ODEs course for a few years, and I was quite surprised just now to find that they're still available and still on-going when I did a quick search for it.