Physics 410: Computational Physics (Fall 2021)
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| COURSE HOME PAGE (this page): http://laplace.physics.ubc.ca/410/ |
| Instructor: Matthew (Matt) W. Choptuik | |
| Web page: http://laplace.physics.ubc.ca/People/matt/ | |
| Home Phone: 604-569-3374 Cell: 778-323-4887 |
Virtual office hours (Zoom): By
appointment via e-mail |
| E-mail: choptuik@phas.ubc.ca
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TAs: Michael Kinach (mikin@phas.ubc.ca) Daniel Wong (danielk@phas.ubc.ca) |
SCHEDULE:
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| COURSE LINKS |
| This
course will provide a survey of techniques from numerical
analysis and other areas of computational science with
applications to problems in physics. A list of topics is as follows (in roughly the order we will be covering them):
Application areas will include: classical dynamics,
quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. |
| There is no required or optional textbook for
the course, but see HERE for
a list of references, many of which provide coverage for
much of what we will be discussing. Note that
full-text PDF versions of most of these references are
available from the UBC library. The PDFs for Powerpoint or equivalent notes will be posted HERE. However, it is up to you to take notes when I present them on the glassboard, which will be the usual mode of operation. NOTE: For students unable to attend one or more lectures, note that a complete set of recordings from 2020's offering of this course is available on Canvas. The coverage for the two instances of the course will be essentially identical. Getting help You can use the course Piazza to post questions, particularly those that are likely to also be of interest to one or more of your classmates. Although I will endeavour to answer posts promptly, I encourage all students to post replies as they feel they are able. However, please do not ask, or supply answers to, questions of the form "How do I do X in homework/project Y?". That type of query should be minimized as much as possible, and directed to me via e-mail. Note that this does not mean that general discussions about the homework/projects are precluded from Piazza. You should feel free to e-mail me with questions that you feel should be kept private or, in general, that you are not comfortable in posting on Piazza. You can arrange a virtual office visit by emailing me to set up an appointment at a mutually convenient time. The Zoom link for such visits is available on Canvas. |
| The "official" computer language for this course
is MATLAB. MATLAB provides a powerful and convenient programming environment that is tailor-made for numerical calculations of the sort we will be considering. It is an interpreted language, which makes it well suited for the type of rapid prototyping and interactive experimentation that you will be encouraged to do in the tutorials and homework assignments. MATLAB is available for you to install on your own computers. See HERE for details. My previous experience with this course suggests that it is not a hardship to require that students use MATLAB for their coursework, so this is the official course policy. |
Your work in this course will consist of two
homework assignments, two projects (which can be viewed as
advanced homeworks) and a term paper. These will have the
following weighting
Late work will generally not be accepted unless there are extenuating circumstances. If you find yourself in the position of needing an extension you must request one from me via an e-mail message as soon as possible and definitely before the due date of the assignment/project. If in doubt about whether your circumstances are sufficiently extenuating note that I tend to be lenient in these matters: on the basis of some issue that arises, I would rather you submit late complete work than timely incomplete work. Each homework/project submission must contain, as a PDF file, a writeup detailing how you completed the assignment, and what the results and conclusions were. This PDF file must be accompanied by the source code files that were used to complete the work. When preparing and submitting a homework/project, you must:
homework-<n>.zip project-<n>.zip where <n> is the number of the homework or project. For example homework-2.zip project-1.zip Note that when creating the zip'ed folder you do not need to specify the .zip extension---that will be done automatically. Also, please minimize use of the submission comment feature in Canvas. If you have information that you wish conveyed to the TAs include it in your writeup. IMPORTANT!! You are welcome to discuss your homework assignments and projects with your fellow students. However, the work that you submit, including any and all source code, must be your own. TERM PAPER Your term paper is to be based on a topic in computational physics, or broadly related area, of your own choosing. For example, you might report on a sub-branch of computational physics, or on an algorithm that has had a major impact in some field of computational science. If you are unsure whether what you have in mind is appropriate, simply check with me. Your paper should be approximately 1500-2000 words in length (not including references), and may contain figures from other sources, provided that proper attribution of these is made. As a model, you might want to think of a relatively short, well-written Wikipedia article (but make sure you use more than just a Wikipedia article or two as your source(s)). There is no required style for term papers, including citation style, but papers should be presented in some specific style appropriate for a scientific communication, including a consistent referencing method. Note that I will not be providing any sample term papers for your perusal: I have great faith that at this point in your education you will, for the most part, be able to produce good papers on your own! Also note that your term paper is not to be viewed as another programming exercise analogous to the homework and project assignments. There is no need for any coding for your papers, and, indeed, coding is explicitly discouraged. Term papers must be submitted in PDF format only. Term papers are due Friday, December 10. |
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| See the UBC 2021/2022 Calendar and Academic Year [all year] pages for more information |