[ODE] Ways to contribute brainpower to ODE? (Higher order integrator?)

[Ryan Gardner]

Background / About me:
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This is my first post the mailing list, so let me begin with a (very)  
brief introduction. My name is Ryan Gardner. I'm an Applied Physics  
major (undergrad) at BYU with an emphasis in Computer Science. I am a  
senior this year, and one of the things I get to (have to?) do before  
I graduate is a capstone project...

My capstone project must be related to both my major and my emphasis.  
The most common way that people fulfill capstone projects is to find  
a professor doing research in an area that needs some "grunt work"  
and then they just kind of tag along with that.

My original idea was to research/write about the implementation of a  
Physics API - and write a very basic one that would handle some  
simple classical mechanics demonstrations (i.e. atwoods machine, a  
cart on a spring, a cart on a spring with a marble rolling on top of  
it... etc) - but in the process of doing some background research, I  
found ODE and realized that there may be a chance that I could make  
some kind of meaningful contribution to an existing project.

Areas I have thought about contributing:
-----------------------------------------------------
I've picked over the documentation and the source code looking for  
how I could help out. Here are a few of the places I see interest in  
developing:

1. A higher order integrator.
2. Making some standard mechanics demos / tests (a pendulum on a cart  
moving on a half-pipe... a cart with a spring on an incline... etc)

I also thought about adding in a mechanism to treat drag forces (both  
linear and quadratic) - but I haven't looked at the code long enough  
to figure out where such a mechanism would fit in, and now it would  
interact with the system... so that is just a side-thought.

Are there any other areas that could use some work?

If I can find something worthwhile to contribute to ODE - and the  
project gets approved by the capstone coordinator - then I would  
likely be working 100-200 hours on the project. (I would also be  
working with a faculty advisor. The advisor I have in mind is  
excellent at computational physics) I will start cranking away on my  
project as soon as I get it approved. The approval process is very  
short (just one person involved)

Please let me know your thoughts about any contributions I can make,

Ryan Gardner