Welcome to Phy380!

There are a few Latex syntax guidelines worth remembering:Our goal in Computational Physics is to develop the skills necessary to use computers to solve physics problems. You will take the tools that you learned in Phy280 and apply them to a variety of physical systems to learn about algorithm development, modeling and analysis.

Course topics

Materials will be divided into lessons as follows:

Lesson	Content
1	Intro to UNIX; Remote login
2	The UNIX Filesystem; The Shell; Commands and wildcard
3	Scripting; Startup files; Emacs
4	Root finding techniques
5	Numerical differentiation and Integration
6	Latex ; Bibtex
7	Ordinary Differential Equations
9	Laplace’s Equation
10	Project

Contents

Lesson content, readings and due dates are subject to change

Course information

• General info
  • Instructor
  • Course website
• Installing Python
  • Install Python on Windows
  • Install Python on macOS
  • Updating
• Learning Objectives
  • Git and GitHub
• Python Vocabulary
• Transferring Files
  • Graphical Options
  • Linux scp

Lesson 1

• Lesson Overview
  • Learning Goals
• Introduction to UNIX/Linux
  • A brief history
  • Reasons to use UNIX-like systems
  • A note on Windows
  • Linux vs. Windows
• The Terminal
• Remote Computing Using SSH
  • Linux/Mac Users
  • Logging in for the first time
  • SSH using Windows
• Basic Linux Commands 1
  • Files and Directories

Lesson 2

• Lesson Overview
  • Learning Goals
• The Linux filesystem
  • Everything in Linux is a file
  • The root directory
  • Directories
  • The Filepath
• Shortcuts and wildcards
  • Directories
  • Wildcards
• The Shell
  • Common features
• Basic Linux Commands 2
  • more
  • head/tail
  • Pipes
  • grep
  • ps
  • Finding files
  • Sort
  • Linking files

Lesson 3

• Lesson Overview
  • Learning Goals
• Editing Text
  • Emacs
  • Starting emacs
  • More basic usage
  • Other useful commands
  • Summary
• File Permissions
• Shell Scripting
  • A first script
  • Background/foreground
  • Running your script
  • Variables
  • Scope
• Startup Files
  • .bash_profile
  • Reloading your startup file
  • .emacs

Lesson 4

• Lesson Overview
  • Learning Goals
• Basic Linux Commands 3
  • gzip filename
  • gunzip filename
  • tar
  • scp
  • awk
  • cmp
  • diff
  • w
  • last -1 username
  • write username
  • du directory
  • df
  • quota -v
• More Shell scripting
  • Escape Characters
  • Loops
• Root Finding
  • Roots of a Quadratic
  • Precision and Round-Off Error
  • Bisection Method
  • Newton-Raphson Method

Lesson 5

• Lesson Overview
  • Learning Goals
• Python Input and Output
  • Reading data from a file
  • Writing to a file
• Numerical Differentiation
  • Finite Differencing
  • Forward and Backwards Differencing
  • Truncation Error
  • Central Differencing
  • Implementation
• Numerical Integration
  • Rectangular rule
  • Trapezoid rule
  • Simpson’s Rule
  • Monte Carlo techniques

Lesson 6

• Lesson Overview
  • Learning Goals
• Latex Basics
  • Basics
  • The Preamble
  • General syntax
  • Sectioning
  • Font Styles
  • Lists
  • Special Characters
  • Math
  • Tables
  • Labels and Cross-referencing
  • Figures
• Latex + Bibtex: Bibliographies
  • Bibtex database
  • Connecting Bibtex to Latex
  • Summary

Lesson 7

• Lesson Overview
  • Learning Goals
• Ordinary Differential Equations
  • Euler’s method
  • Runge-Kutta Techniques

Lesson 8

• Laplace’s Equation
  • A note about relaxation techniques
  • Higher-order methods

Indices and tables

• Index
• Module Index
• Search Page