PHY201 - Physics Computations II

Maintained by Phil Duxbury
All course materials and worksheets will appear here

Instructor

  • Prof. Phil Duxbury - Rm 205PA, 353-9179, duxbury@pa.msu.edu

    Teaching assistants

  • Aleksandar Donev (Fortran) - donev@pa.msu.edu
  • Patrick Gallagher - gallag63@cse.msu.edu

    Course Outline

    This one credit course is the second of three such courses (PHY102, PHY201, PHY301) designed to teach undergraduate physics students how to use computers to solve physics problems. PHY102 emphasizes the use of Mathematica. PHY201 develops your knowledge of programming in Fortran 77 and Fortrn 90, though you also need to use Mathematica from time to time. PHY301 emphasizes object-oriented programming primarily in JAVA but we will also have to talk about C++ and C which are the predecessors to JAVA. Mathematica will continue to be used from time to time.

    Course Assessment

  • 75% will come from your solution to the weekly worksheets. For each worksheet which is not completed your grade is reduced by 0.5. If you complete all the worksheets but do not do the lab. exam, you get a 3.0 grade.
  • 25% will come from a one hour practical exam at the end of the semester. This exam will be held in the last week of semester during your regular lab. time. In the exam you will be asked to write simple Fortran code and to use Mathematica. Nothing new will be introduced. You will need to know how to use the online help facilities.

    (Tentative) Lab. Schedule - Room 346 Giltner Hall

    Tuesday: 1-3:30pm.
    Instructors Donev
    Students Chvolka, Arnold, Elliot, Harris, Ochoa, Santonocito
    Tuesday: 7-9:30pm(PHY301).
    Instructor Gallagher
    Students Kuxhaus, Strahler
    Thursday: 2-4:30pm.
    Instructors Duxbury
    Students Chvolka, Dumont, Katsuhara, Schepler, Strahler, Trionfi, Weerts
    Thursday: 6-8:30pm.
    Instructor Donev
    Students Lam, Lande, Oostdyk, Park, Prichard, Welsch

    The worksheets

    Worksheet 1 - due 8th Sept. at 5pm.
    Worksheet 2 - due 15th Sept. at 5pm.
    Worksheet 3 - due 22nd Sept. at 5pm.
    Worksheet 4 - due 29th Sept. at 5pm.
    Worksheet 5 - due 6th Oct. at 5pm.
    Worksheet 6 - due 13th Oct. at 5pm.
    Worksheet 7 - due 27th Oct. at 5pm. Here is Alex's solution
    Worksheet 8 - due 10th Nov. at 5pm. Here is Alex's solution
    Worksheet 9 - due 8th Dec. at 5pm.
    Test Exam and it's solution
    The final exam is 8-9pm Thursday Dec. 7th in rm346G

    Reference materials

  • Introduction to Fortran Reference Manual and many links to fortran resources.
  • The textbook "An introduction to Fortran 90 for Scientific Computing" by James M. Ortega, is very nice. Buy it if you intend a career which includes scientific computing.