This is the second in a series of hands-on computational labs designed to complement the traditional lecture/lab/recitation Physics instructional sequence. It is intended to be taken after PHYS 113/114/115 (Contemporary Physics), PHYS 323 (Topics in Mathematical Physics), or their equivalents, and after MCS 210 (Ordinary Differential Equations). Students will be introduced to basic scientific programming techniques and problem-solving strategies using examples and case studies drawn from the material normally presented in physics and mathematics. The major topic will be to solve numerically Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs). Diverse approaches to do so will be explained, their pros and cons discussed, their accuracy studied and their uses illustrated. Case studies will be extracted from mechanical systems. non-linear systems, chaos, many-boody systems, qunatum mechanics and many more. the generation of random numbers and their use in physics will be demonstrated as well.
There is no required textbook for this course. The material we will need during this quarter will be distributed via the course WWW pages.
Note however that most of the computational
material will be based on the text Numerical Recipes in C, by
W. Press, S. Teukolsky, W. Vetterling, and B. Flannery (1992,
Cambridge University Press). You do not need to buy the NR book since we will
not use any NR section verbally, nor will we not use the NR codes.
NR is very valuable to consult when trying to understand
theoriticaly a method of solution.
Furthermore, most research groups have one or more copies of the book.)