Physics 606

Techniques of Computational Physics

Welcome to the Techniques of Computational Physics course web page. This course is offered Fall Semester 1999. Here we will provide information about the course as well as materials. Both lecture materials and other background materials will be provided as the course developes.

Note that we intend to make extensive use of this web page. Please refer to it on a regular basis for occasional extra materials, lecture notes, and hand-outs. The url for this web page is:
http://chandra.bgsu.edu/~gcd/p606.html

Course Instructor:

Comer Duncan, Professor of Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 173 Oveman Hall; Office Hours by appointment; Telephone: 372 8108; you may also visit my web page.

Course Information

Course Materials:

Hand-outs on various computational physics methods will be provided.
When possible, links in this web page to the lectures and selected hand-outs will be made as the term proceeds.
A bibliography of some key references will be provided.

Course Objectives:

This course is an introduction to the methods of analytical and computational physics for upper division undergraduate science majors. The emphasis will be on the development of tools useful in formulating and solving problems in the physical sciences. Among the topics to be covered are:

Unix
Numerical Methods--differentiation, integration, root finders
Logistic Map and Chaos
Some Numerical Methods for Ordinary differential equations
Hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations
Introdution to Computational Fluid Dynamics
The Schrodinger Equation--Time evolution of the Wave Function
Elliptic Partial Differential Equations
The Gravitational N-Body Problem--a few basic methods

Fortran programming as used in all programming of the computational physics. There is a good treatment of fortran 90 for the fortran 77 programmer which you should consult when needed.

There may be other topics that can be covered. We shall tailor the topics somewhat to the interests of the students and instructor.
The course will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. in the Workstation Lab in room 304 of Eppler North as well as in the Physics and Astronomy conference room, Overman 106.

Tentative Course Syllabus

Meeting Date	Lecture Topic	Supporting Materials
Aug. 26	Course Introduction and Introduction to Unix
Sept. 1	Unix II	UNIXhelp for Users Tutorial Material
Sept. 3	Unix III	Beginner's Guide to Unix Shell Programming
Sept. 8	Beginner's Guide to Unix Shell Programming
Sept. 10	Numerical Differentiation,Introduction to fortran90
Sept. 15	Numerical Integration Basics, Introduction to fortran90

Requirements for the course:

A knowledge of Physics at the undergraduate level is assumed. Any further study in mathematics would be helpful, but not necessarily a requirement. If you already know a high level language [such as C, C++, fortran] that will help. Mathematica will be a component in the course delivery. We intend that the student will learn Mathematica during the semester. Matlab may also be used in some situations. The student will be expected to learn Mathematica and Matlab programming as needed. Both Mathematica and Matlab are available on the bgunix machines.

Examinations:

There will be problem sets given approximately every two weeks, but probably not more than seven sets. I will also assign two projects during the term. These will be more in depth studies of some topic from the physics which can be meaningfully understood using the tools covered in this course.