An Introduction to Computing in Physics


Physics 298 owl, Fall 2017

Loomis 276, Thursday afternoons, 4 pm - 5:50 pm

2 credit hours


Course policies


  • Attendance

    You are required to attend each and every one of the course meetings, arriving on time with your laptop computer and charger. I will reduce your final grade by half a letter grade per unexcused absence. If you fall ill, have an unavoidable interview for an internship, need to attend to a religious obligation, or must miss class because of a family crisis, let me know, in advance, if possible. Be sure to gather convincing documentation demonstrating that your absence was necessary and/or appropriate.



  • Late homework

    Assignments for units that begin on a Monday will be due in class three days later, at the start of Thursday's class meeting. Assignments for units that begin on a Thursday will be due at the beginning of the following Monday's class meeting. Late assignments that are submitted up to the due date of the next assignment will receive at most 50% of full credit. We will not grade assignments that are received after the end of the 50% credit date.



  • Grading

    If you show up to class, do a pretty good job on all of your homework, and a decent job on the exams, you will receive at least an A- for the course. If you do a really good job on your homework and write good exams you'll get an A. If you stumble onto something that really blows me away, I'll give you an A+ and brag about you in the letters of recommendation I will write on your behalf.



  • Calculators, smart phones, and network access to irrelevant content

    You will be using your laptops in class. That's the only kind of networked device I will permit: cellphones, calculators, and smart watches are not to be in evidence in class, or during exams. Period.

    During class you are not to access anything that is not directly relevant to the work at hand: no visits to social media sites, or logins to your email accounts. During exams I will insist that you turn off your laptop's wireless networking hardware.



  • About using code you find on the web

    The quickest way to deal with the arcana of programing is to ask Google for examples of what you are seeking to accomplish. But you will need to use your judgment in doing this: the Google search “how do I use color maps in spyder python?” is fine, while “show me a script that calculates pi” is not. And you should always credit the original source of code that you paste into your own programs in a comment that includes the URL for the original code. If an author says that his/her code is not to be copied or incorporated into your programs, then DON’T.

    I have two principal goals in this course. I want all of you to become fearless coders with the confidence to walk up to baffling problems and pound them into submission. And I want you to develop numerical descriptions of cool systems normally thought to be too difficult for students at your level, whose analytic descriptions might obscure the underlying physics. For this to work, you’ll need to write your own code.



  • Academic integrity

    You must never submit the work of someone else as your own. We understand that many of you will find it helpful to work with other students to master Physics 298 owl. But when you collaborate with your study group on homework assignments, you must be a full, active participant in developing the solutions that you submit for credit.

    It is cheating to receive answers from another student and then use them as your own. It is cheating to submit as your own work solutions that you find by searching on the worldwide web (though see "About using code you find on the web"), or by subscribing to an online service that suborns cheating. It is cheating—and a violation of U.S. copyright law—to give (or sell) course material to someone else who intends to redistribute and/or sell it.

    All activities in this course, including documentation submitted for petition for an excused absence, are subject to the Academic Integrity rules as described in Article 1, Part 4, Academic Integrity, of the Student Code.



The owl of Athena