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.