Physics 410: Computational Physics (Fall 2024)
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| COURSE HOME PAGE (this page): http://laplace.physics.ubc.ca/410/ |
| Instructor: Matthew (Matt) W. Choptuik | |
| Web page: https://laplace.physics.ubc.ca/People/matt/ | |
| Office Phone: 604-822-2412 Cell: 778-323-4887 |
Virtual office hours (Zoom): By
appointment via e-mail |
| E-mail: choptuik@phas.ubc.ca
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TAs: Musaab Al-Bakry (musaab@phas.ubc.ca) Howard Hong (xili@phas.ubc.ca) |
SCHEDULE:
Mode of course instruction:
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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. Tutorial sessions will involve problem solving
exercises--including programming--generally related to
material from the previous week's lectures. Tutorials will
be posted shortly before they are due to be worked to
facilitate your preparation for them. |
| 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 board, which will be the usual mode of operation. Lectures will be recorded and made available via Canvas. NOTE: If I am ill but still able to lecture, I will lecture using Zoom. If I am unable to lecture, due to illness or some other reason, one or more recordings will be made available on Canvas. 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. Please do not ask the TAs for assistance; the hours they are allocated for this course are needed for grading. 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. Use of generative AI The emergence of generative AI tools such as Chat GPT promises to have a profound impact on the manner in which programmers carry out their craft. Since your coursework in PHYS 410 requires a significant amount of programming it is clear that we need a clear and fair policy for the use of this technology in the course. That policy is this:
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| 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 final exam. 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. Please ensure that your homework/project source code is submitted as basic '.m' files, not '.mlx' files. I understand that you may feel that the latter is natural to produce a report that integrates discussion and code, but course policy is to keep source code separate from the writeup per se. You should use text processing software such as LaTex (preferred) or Word to prepare your writeups. See the Homework page for guidelines concerning your writeups. When preparing and submitting a homework/project, you must:
homework-<n> project-<n> where <n> is the number of the homework or project. For example homework-2 project-1 After zipping the top-level folder you should have a zipped file such as homework-2.zip project-1.zip which you will then submit. The unzipping operation must create the top-level folder, and that folder must contain your writeup and all source code files associated with the assignment. You should check that this is the case. Note that when creating the zipped folder you usually will not need to specify the .zip extension---that will be done automatically. Finally, 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. Also note that if you need to resubmit your assignment for any reason, Canvas will probably force you to use a distinct name for the submission. This is fine. 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 (i.e. original to you). |
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| See the UBC 2024/2025 Calendar and Academic Year [all months] pages for more information. |