PHYS 401 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Accessing Computing Tools and Resources
Accessing the Campus Network (VPN)
Some computing tools (the EWS file system, lab PCs, Citrix, some software, some library resources) work only from the campus network. To access them from off-campus you need to initiate a VPN connection. The campus VPN system allows you to use your NetID to set up a secure network connection to campus, so that your machine looks like it's on the campus network. To install the client software, see instructions here. "SpiltTunnel_Default" is adequate for most resources, though "TunnelAll" may be needed in some cases.
The EWS Shared File System
A variety of useful software is installed on the computers in the college's Engineering WorkStation (EWS) computer labs. Each user has their own home directory accessible from any EWS computer, including the Physics 401 lab computers (ESB-6103-01 through ESB-6103-06). This is a good place for saving your course data and analysis work.
While these campus labs are currently closed, the data directories can be mounted remotely. EWS computers are also accessible remotely via direct login or the Citrix system. Further details on remote connections are given here.
In addition to your home directory, there is a shared directory for course materials. We may point you to materials there from time to time, notably the Origin templates (see below).
- From WINDOWS: \\engr-file-03\phyinst\APL Courses\PHYCS401\
- From MacOS: Finder -> Go -> Connect To Server
smb://engr-file-03.engr.illinois.edu/\\engr-file-03/phyinst/APL Courses/PHYCS401/
Data Analysis Software
OriginPro
Origin is a dedicated software package for scientific data analysis and plotting. We recommend using Origin for this course due to the library of convenient analysis templates built up over the years (see below). Some useful general reference links are:
Getting and using OriginPro:
- The latest version of OriginPro is available for free from the campus WebStore. Any vaguely-recent version is acceptable for this course.
- Origin is Windows-only. If you use a different OS you can run Origin via the campus Citrix system (VPN required, "Tunnel All" setting). This is a remote computing system that installs nothing on your own machine, and stores all data on the campus EWS file system. If you don't see Origin on your Citrix desktop, click "Refresh Applications".
- If you prefer a local installation on a non-Windows system, you can install Origin within a virtual machine such as VirtualBox (free), VMWare (free through campus webstore), or Parallels ($31 through campus webstore).
- Origin is installed on the lab computers in ESB 6103, and the installation file and serial number are also on each computer.
The course has built up a collection of Origin templates to help get you started with plotting and data analysis for each of the labs. These are hosted on the campus file sharing system. Some general access instructions for your home directory on the shared system are here.
- From WINDOWS: \\engr-file-03\phyinst\APL Courses\PHYCS401\Common\Origin templates
- From MacOS: Finder -> Go -> Connect To Server
smb://engr-file-03.engr.illinois.edu/\\engr-file-03/phyinst/APL Courses/PHYCS401/Common/Origin templates
Python
Python is a general-purpose programming language that is widely used in science and industry. It is both free and cross-platform. Python implements useful data analysis tools through packages such as NumPy (fast vector and matrix numerics), SciPy (scientific computing, including curve-fitting and statistics), Matplotlib (Matlab-like plotting and visualization), and Pandas (manipulation of large and multi-format data sets).
Python can be installed and managed on your computer in many ways. A common command-line package manager is pip. Anaconda is a good general-purpose graphical package manager for Python across multiple platforms. iPython provides a good Matlab-like command line interface for data analysis. Jupyter notebooks provide a workbook-like interface that can be very useful.
Other Analysis Software
All of the data analysis and plotting functions of OriginPro can be replicated in a variety of other software environments. You are more than welcome to use other solutions that are more convenient for you, as long as you can produce plots and analysis of similar quality. At this time we do not have templates (or the equivalent) for these other packages, however, nor can we offer detailed support.
- Matlab is a popular engineering software package, available for free to students on Citrix and through the campus WebStore. It is optimized for numerical analysis involving vectors and matrices, and implements a wealth of statistics and plotting tools through a wealth of packages. Cross-platform.
- R is a programming language and software environment focused on statistical computing, and widely used in data science. While course analysis should be doable in R, Prof. Burkova has no experience with this one. Free, cross-platform.
- Most analysis activities can be carried out in Microsoft Excel in a pinch, though more versatile scientific software is preferred.
Report Writing Software
There is no required software for writing your reports. Microsoft Word will do the job, with some care about typesetting equations and positioning figures.
We recommend you take this opportunity to learn LaTeX, a document-preparation system that is used nearly universally for research papers in physics, astronomy, mathematics, computer science, etc. LaTeX is not a WYSIWYG document editing system - instead, documents are written in plain text with a variety of markers and tags to specify typesetting, and then compiled into a PDF document. It takes some effort to learn, but produces excellent results and may be useful to you in the future.
Here is a useful Introduction to LaTeX: http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf.
If you want to work with LaTeX but not install the packages themselves, you may find these tools useful: