Computational Physics - PHYS 410/510 - Spring 2025
Class meetings:
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 9:30-10:45 in La Tourette Hall 227, starting 2025-01-14
Instructor: Professor A. Glatz
Office: La Tourette Hall 217
Office hours: Virtual by appointment (just send an email) - preferred.
Tue/Thu 11:00-12:00 in office.
Grading: Weighted according to 35% homework, 15% lecture attendence, and (20% midterm + 30% final) exam/project.
Homework policies: Late penalty: 10% off for each day late up to 5 days; 100% off for > 5 days. I prefer homework papers to be turned in at the beginning of class on Tuesday, but they are considered on time if turned in by 17:00 on the due date. You can turn them in to my mailbox in the Physics main office if I am not around. Homework should be written neatly (or typed), single-sided on paper, and stapled. Codes, data, and figures can be send by email. You are encouraged to consult with each other on the homework. However, each of you must turn in only your own work. Do not turn in anything that you have copied, or anything that you do not truly understand.
Exam policies: Exams will be closed book, but you may bring one page of notes in your own original handwriting. No electronic devices are allowed.
Midterm (48h task): Mach 25-27, 2025
Final project presentations: Thursday, April 24, 2025, 9:30am
Suggestions: It is strongly suggested that you do attend class and take notes. If you have problems with your homework or to understand some concepts, please do come to my office for help. The best way to prepare for exams is to study homework problems and the lecture notes.
See the also the syllabus for a list of topics to be covered in the course.
Lectures
| date | ||
| Overview | 2025-01-14 | |
| Lecture 2 Floating point number, sources of errors, stability, pendulum demo | PDF + Jupyter notebook for pendulum + pendulum demo (pdf) | 2025-01-16 |
Homework
| due before class on | ||
| Assignment 1 | 2025-01-28 | |
Literature
- Required textbook: Benjamin A. Stickler, Ewald Schachinger, Basic Concepts in Computational Physics, 2nd Edition, Springer 2016 [DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-27265-8_1]
- J. Franklin, Computational Methods for Physics, Cambridge University Press (July 15, 2013)
- Nicholas J. Giordano, Hisao Nakanishi, Computational Physics, Addison-Wesley; 2 edition (July 31, 2005)
- Alfio Quarteroni, Riccardo Sacco and Fausto Saleri, Numerical Mathematics, Springer; 2nd edition (October 19, 2006)
- Curtis F. Gerald and Patrick O. Wheatley, Applied Numerical Analysis, Pearson; 7 edition (August 10, 2003)
- Germund Dahlquist and Åke Björck, Numerical Methods in Scientific Computing: Volume 1, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (September 4, 2008)
Online resources (external)
- Basic python programming
- Jupyter tutorial
- Jupyter introduction
- (official) Jupyter documentation
- Google Colaboratory (requires gmail account)
- Labplot (2D plotting with GUI)
- Paraview (3D data visualization)