Physics 246 (298 owl)

There will be between 10-14 units in this course. This will be adjusted as the course goes on.

Unit 1: N Ways To Generate PI

A good introduction to python: here
Setting up your owl account
0. PDF on Hardware (nothing to hand in)
1a. Python Preliminaries (nothing to hand in)
1b. N Ways to Compute PI

Solution

Learning objectives: Familiarity with Jupyter notebooks; Being able to program loops and list comprehensions; Plotting data; Understanding and using random numbers; Developing an intuition for stochastic errors; Limits and Series;

Unit 2: The Dynamics of Throwing Balls into the Air

2. Dynamics of Throwing Balls
- Solution

Learning objectives: Remembering dynamics; Differential Equations as a route to understand scientific phenomena; Air Resistance; Programming Functions; Understanding abstraction of computational components; Validating code; Euler Integration and errors associated with them; Plotting on logarithmic scales;

Unit 3: Improved Dynamics and Springs

Learning objectives: Programming and using classes; Midpoint formulas for differential equations and their associated errors; Learning how to modify small parts of a code to change the physics/more abstraction; Damped harmonic oscillators; Pendulums; Forcing functions;

Unit 4: Orbital Dynamics

Learning objectives: Developing two-dimensional dynamics code; gravitational forces; central potentials; Kepler's laws; analyzing data; orbital dynamics;