Physics 410: Computational Physics: Course News


This document will be updated throughout the course; entries are in reverse chronological order.

Tuesday, December 3, 1:30 PM

The xfpp3d utility now accepts a -c option that allows the displayed particles to be colored in a user-specified fashion. See the on-line documentation HERE for more details.

Thursday, November 21, 6:00 PM

The location of the final exam has now been announced. It will be in HEBB 10, Dec 10, 12:00 PM.

Sunday, November 17, 12 Noon

Mpeg generation capability has been added to both xfpp3d and xflat2d. See HERE for details.

Friday, November 8, 4:15 PM

Usage of the lnx boxes is intensifying and there have been some problems lately with machine hangs, re-boots etc. In order to minimize frustration for all, please e-mail me IMMEDIATELY if you encounter a "frozen" machine.

Wednesday, November 6, 2 PM

The Term Project PAGE has been updated to include links to documentation for visualization programs likely to be useful for various projects. Note that this documentation is still under development, particularly in the case of xvs, so if you have any questions, or encounter any problems, send me e-mail as usual.

In addition, for those of you studying the KdV equation (solitons), I have added a link to a summary of Newton's method for nonlinear systems of equations.

Monday, October 28, 12 Noon

The handout for Homework 4 is now available. I will distribute hard-copy in tomorrow's class.

Wednesday, October 23, 7 PM

The preliminary EXAM SCHEDULE is now available. Tenatively, our final exam is scheduled for
   TUESDAY DECEMBER 10, 12 NOON

Wednesday, October 23, 7 PM

There will be another power outage in Hennings this weekend from
   FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 11:00 PM   TO   SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27, 11:00 PM
During this time the lnx machines, as well as laplace.physics.ubc.ca (the machine which serves the course Web pages) will be unavailable. physics.ubc.ca, on the other hand, should remain (remotely) accessible.

Friday, October 11, 11 AM

Further to Monday's news item, the power outage in Hennings is now scheduled for
   FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 11:00 PM   TO   MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 11:00 PM
During this time the lnx machines, as well as physics and laplace.physics.ubc.ca (the machine which serves the course Web pages) will be unavailable.

Tuesday, October 8, 12 Noon

Ryan has pointed out that there is a notational ambiguity in Homework 2, Problem 2.1. The expression to be differentiated is
      ( cos(ln(3x+6)/y) )^2
not
      cos( (ln(3x+6)/y)^2 )
The online handout has been updated to make the intent clear.

Monday, October 7, 3:30 PM

Please note that there will be a complete electrical shutdown in the Hennings building from
   FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 9:30 PM   TO   MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 12:00 AM
During this time the lnx machines, as well as physics and laplace.physics.ubc.ca (the machine which serves the course Web pages) will be unavailable.

Sunday, October 6, 6:30 PM

Plato has pointed out the following typo in Homework 2, Problem 3. In the description of lpair:
   whose i-th element is the 2-element list [ l1[1] , l2[i] ] 
                                                 ^
                                                 |
should read
   whose i-th element is the 2-element list [ l1[i] , l2[i] ] 
                                                 ^
                                                 |
The online handout has been updated.

Monday, September 30, 3:30 PM

The handout for Homework 2 is now available. I will distribute hard-copy in tomorrow's class.

Monday, September 16, 8:00 PM

Two items relating to Unix and, in particular, to the first homework:
  1. ADDITIONAL HINT FOR HW 1.7: Consider the following printf usage example:
    % printf "%s %s %s\n" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
    1 2 3
    4 5 6
    7
    
  2. As a follow-up to the previous News item, a section on the command-line use of the control character ^V has been added to the Unix notes.

Friday, September 13, 4:30 PM

Alexandra has brought to my attention the difficulty in specifying a TAB character in the context of a shell command line, which is nominally required to complete Problem 4 of Homework 1. Consequently, that problem has been changed to read as follows:
   In a directory ~/hw1/a4, create a file called compressed whose contents
   are identical to ~phys410/hw1/q4/input except that all lines which 
   contain only spaces have been removed. 
I.e., your solution no longer has to detect TAB characters in the input file, and, indeed, I have modified ~phys410/hw1/q4/input so that it contains no TABs. The online version of the homework, available HERE has been updated to reflect this change.

If you have already completed this problem, I request that you redo it in view of the new specification---this should be very straightforward, and will make the grader's like easier.

Friday, September 6, 12 noon

The handout for Homework 1 is now available. I will distribute hard-copy in next Tuesday's class.

Thursday, September 5, 3:30 PM

I have created the following accounts on the lnx machines:
   mnhoff    cliew     murray    dwalters
Refer to the previous message for additonial information.

Tuesday, September 3, 8:30 PM

I have created the following accounts on the lnx machines:
   carmitag  jake      kcheng    sdavis    hossain
   soonlee   pletourn  pleung    jlindahl  bruno
   cdneish   pope      jrosales  hseetzen  rmshanno
   tiffanan  suresh    btippett
If you wish, and if your account appears in the above list, you should now be able to ssh into the lnx machines from a remote host via any one of
   ssh userid@lnx1.physics.ubc.ca
   ssh userid@lnx2.physics.ubc.ca
   ssh userid@lnx3.physics.ubc.ca
where userid is to be replaced with your own user id. You should also be able to login into the lnx machines via their consoles in Hennings 205. Your password should be the same as that for your account on physics.ubc.ca. If you have any difficulties logging in, and if the NOTES concerning machine usage are not sufficient to solve these problems, let me know via e-mail immediately.

Tuesday, September 3, 3:30 PM

To accomodate those who will be attending the Undergraduate Physics Conference this fall, the midterm exam has been rescheduled for
   Tuesday, October 29, 10 AM

Monday, August 26, 11:30 AM

Our first class is scheduled for 10 AM, Tuesday September 3, 2002 in Hennings 304.