Physics 381C: Computational Physics: Course News

This document will be updated throughout the course

Wednesday, May 14, 11:00 pm

The key for Homework 4 is now available.

Tuesday, April 29, 8:30 pm

Please recall that all term papers are to be prepared with LaTeX. Your final product should be a single postscript file. E-mail me when you are ready to submit your term paper and make sure your message points me to an existing postscript file containing your paper. It is not necessary to submit hard copy.

Here is the LaTeX source, the.tex, for the key to Homework 1, which illustrates how to include postscript files (figures) and code (using verbatim environments). If you download the source and all of the postscript files: distance.ps, out100.ps, out1000.ps, out10000.ps to a working directory, then the comand sequence 

   % latex the
   % dvips the
should produce a file the.ps identical to this one.

Finally, please also send me an e-mail message when you are done with Homework4. Note that all term papers and homeworks are due Saturday, May 10, 1997, 11:59pm at the absolute latest. Earlier submissions will be greatly appreciated.

Tuesday, April 8, 6:00 pm

A correction has been made to equation (2.5b) of Homework 4. The equation should (and now does) read 
     n+1     n+1      n+1       n+1
    u    =  u    =   u     =   u    =  0
     1       2        nx-1      nx
The original version had F's instead of u's.

Tuesday, April 1, 4:00 pm

Homework 4 is now available. As usual, there may be some minor adjustments to the handout in the days to come. Please inform me immediately if you suspect that something is amiss with the assignment. Finally, the bbhutil documentation referred to in the first question is not yet available on-line, but will be shortly.

Tuesday, March 25, 3:00 pm

If you are using the X-terminal in room 9.202 (wheeler) and are having problems with "white-on-white" 'xterm' applications, try the following:

(1) Put the following line in your .cshrc 
   setenv XENVIRONMENT $HOME/.Xdefaults.mine
(2) Copy ~phy329/.Xdefaults.mine to your home directory. 
   % cd
   % cp ~phy329/.Xdefaults.mine .
(3) Use a 'Unix shell' from the 'Desktop' menu rather than 'xterm'

Clearly it is best to make these modifications on some DISPLAY other than wheeler.

Sunday, March 9, 11:45 am

A very important typo in Homework 3 has been pointed out by Markus. The differential equation (2.1) should be 
   (1 - x^2) C(x)'' - 1.628 x C(x)' + lambda C(x) = 0
(i.e. the coefficient in front of C(x)' should be -1.628 x, not +1.628). The online handout has been updated.

Monday, March 3, 12:30 pm

A few minor corrections and changes have been made to Homework 3. Please update your copy if necessary.

Sunday, March 2, 9:30 pm

Homework 3 is now available.

Tuesday, February 11, 2:00 pm

The make-up class for this Thursday will be held on Monday, Feb 17 at 12:00 noon in RLM 7.116

Thursday, February 6, 11:00 am

The make-up class for last Tuesday will be held tomorrow, Friday, Feb 7 at 12:00 noon in RLM 5.114

Sunday, January 26, 2:30 pm

Important: Modification of Homework 1:   In perusing the work you have done so far, it has become clear to me that I ambiguously worded Problem 6. Therefore, I have changed the problem so that rw2d is now to compute and output the average over all the walks of the square of the particle's distance from its starting point. Please refer to the revised Homework handout (PS) for complete information.

Sunday, January 26, 12:40 pm

Note that this archive is now arranged in reverse chronological order (i.e. most recent news first).

Sunday, January 26, 12:30 pm

Notes for Homework 1:   I gave you incomplete information regarding the example f77/ex6/tfpe (Problem 5). I've updated the comments in the source file tfpe.f and the Makefile on the phy329 account, so that you should now be able to figure out how to "trap" floating point errors. If you have already compiled the example, please re-copy the source and the Makefile and try running the example in both "non-trapping" (default) and "trapping" modes.

In addition, due to the problems we are having with the Linux machines, you may consider completion of Problem 1a optional.

Thursday, January 23, 10:45 am

Please note that if you have overwritten the default .cshrc file that came with you SGI accounts, some of the things we discuss in class (particularly with respect to Makefiles) may not work. Refer to the original file and class notes, or contact me if you have problems.

Thursday, January 23, 10:00 am

Unless you intend to regularly read your mail on einstein, you should ensure that you have a .forward file in your home directory on the SGIs in order that mail sent to you at one of the SGIs is properly forwarded to the machine where you regularly read your e-mail. See the Unix notes for more information.

Thursday, January 23, 9:35 am

IMPORTANT!! The Linux machines in the Graduate Student Lab are currently unavailable due to security problems. There is no firm estimate re when those machines will be back up, but it will be at least a day or two. Students who are unable to find access (via their own research groups for example) to other Unix workstations of X-terminals should contact me as soon as possible so that alternative arrangements can be made. Note that in addition to the SGI machines, the Center for Relativity has an X-terminal called wheeler.ph.utexas.edu in RLM 9:202 which you can use. Unfortunately, at this time neither netscape or mosaic will run on this x-term but we are working on the problem.

Wednesday, January 22, 3:00 pm

Please refer to the new Course-Related Software page for information concerning various pieces of software you may find useful during the course (and for the first Homework in particular).

Monday, January 20, 1:30 pm

The following accounts now exist on both the Phys Dept Unix and Center for Relativity SGI machines. Note that if you already had an account on the Phys Dept machines, you did not receive an additional account: 
   ambrose, asbreu, iliani, iolabar, jennifer, lischka, metzler,
   rmahaffy, shawley, timbertk, xzhao, xyzhang

Please verify that you can login to both sets of machines, and change your passwords (using the passwd command in both cases) on any newly created accounts.