Physics 410: Computational Physics: Course News |
| This document will be updated throughout the course; entries are in reverse chronological order. |
| This
may be the last news item ever posted in PHYS 410 at UBC with MWC. Or maybe not. Anyway, if and only if you like "shaggy dog stories" (a.k.a. "shaggy dog jokes"), please note that the UNOFFICIAL 410 GRADES are now available should you be able to sit through all 342 Mbyte of this MPEG. Turn up the volume and I apologize in advance for thick Canadian accent, eh? Please, defer all questions concerning these UNOFFICIAL 410 GRADES until you have your official grades, at which point you are most welcome to start warming up the pitch & feathers, and securing a good sturdy pole to carry my lard-a&* out of town (or at least off campus) on! |
| The
remainder of the course
notes are now on line, including sections on Linear Systems,
ODEs and Nonlinear Equations and Root Finding. This should be especially good news for those of you who have been looking for guidance in solving nonlinear systems, ODEs etc. etc. but haven't thought of looking at the 2004 PHYS 410 Web Page or the 2003 PHYS 410 Web Page ... or the 2000 PHYS 410 Web Page or the 1998 Phy 329 Web Page or the 1996 Phy 319 Web Page. I am currently assembling the remaining notes, including source code etc. into a single package that will be soon available outside my office, in the "official" (i.e. labelled) 410 box, and which I will bring to Tuesday's class. I know you don't want to hear about it, but that 1996 bunch was a HECK of a group of students, whom I worked mercilessly, like dogs. And remember, at UT Austin---although I would not have received lethal injection for the offense, as stereotype might have it---it was contrary to state legislation for me to allow/require those poor foobars to hand in any term papers or homework late (i.e. after the last day of classes). So, you can imagine that the last week of classes was always a little more than insane than was probably healthy. Alan Chiang's project on the Schrodinger equation set a benchmark for PDE work at the ODE level; alas for physics, he headed off to Med school to become a real doctor! Most of the others went off to grad school in physics or related, and it is interesting to note that, although 329 was an elective there as 410 is here, "my bunch" represented about 1/3 of the physics undergrads at UT Austin. Specifically, while I was there as a faculty member (95-98) we typically graduated about 25 physics undergrads (no separate majors, honors, or eng phys, just phys), and about 25 PhDs!! Quite a contrast to UBC, which won't routinely graduate 25 PhD's per year for some time year, but which must be pushing 120 total undergraduate degrees with physics at the core. |
| FFFFfffff!
... Have to blow the dust off this News Page, eh? Just in case you need something else to get working on, the Homework 5 handout is now available HERE. I will distribute hardcopy in Thursday's class, and remember, I will try to get the Thunderbirds going at 9:30, assuming no one else has 318 booked. |
| The
deadline for submission of term project outlines is now THURSDAY, OCTOBER
20, 10:00. Rock on! |
| The
third homework handout is now available for download HERE.
I will distribute hardcopy on Tuesday's class. |
| ATTENTION emacs users. Yes, you know who
you are, you quiche eaters! Should you wish old-fashioned, tty, emacs instead of gussied up GUIfied xemacs, have no fear, the GNU folk are lightfortnights ahead of you: simply use % xemacs -nwNote that the gnufolk brazenly flout the Unix convention for flags (i.e. single characters only!); '-nw' means '(n)o [new] (w)indow)' Rock on, quiche eaters! |
| The
midterm has been rescheduled, and will now be held on Thursday, November 3. Let Matt
know immediately if this change (from Tuesday, November 1) will present
a problem for you. |
| Man,
that was a LONNNNNNGG weekend! The second homework, version 0, is now ready for download HERE. Hardcopy will be distributed in today's class. |
| Jason Thompson has run
into an infuriating little problem that he reported to me last evening.
As he suggests, it is a good idea for me to pass along the source of his difficulties, as well as their resolution. So to get straight to the point---BE SURE THAT THE FILES THAT YOU CREATE THAT ARE TO BE USED FOR SCRIPTS, SOURCE FOR THE tcsh 'source' COMMAND ETC. HAVE LINES THAT ALL END WITH AN END-OF-LINE. Jason's 'thesource' file for his answer to Problem 5 DID NOT have an end-of-line, and thus when he executed % source thesource
In the tcsh, he got NO output. I "fixed" this simply by 'vi'-ing
the file, and then exiting since 'vi', being the a member of the
fundamental family of Unix editors, always (and sensibly) leaves files
in the state that Unix likes 'em.If you use 'vi' this is automatic, for all other editors, including 'emacs', all bets are off, so check your editor settings, and associated documentation. Thanks for reporting this, Jason! Hi Matt, |
| IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE CURRENT HOMEWORK The command Mail covered in class appears to be broken on physics.ubc.ca at the current time. Thus, please do not use Mail to complete Problem (1c) of the homework. I suggest that you use pine instead. On the lnx machines you can use either Mail or pine (or any other mail client that you can find, for that matter) as you wish. I apologize for the inconvenience caused to students who attempted to use Mail on physics, which no doubt resulted in an obscure error message, and non-delivery of the e-mail. The homework handout has been updated accordingly and can be downloaded from HERE. |
| The final version (modulo any "bug fixes") of the first Homework is now available for download HERE. Hardcopy will be distributed in next Tuesday's class. Don't me intimidated by the length of the handout, and please, report any apparent "bug", inconsistencies, lack of clarity etc. etc. to Matt immediately. |
I
have created the following accounts on the lnx
machines:
gklarsen gtopping harishIf 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.cawhere 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. |
I
have created the following accounts on the lnx
machines:
parmveer kcboj ercheung yunhsin kdadashzIf 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.cawhere 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. |
| Our
first class is scheduled for 10
AM, TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 6, 2004 in HENNINGS 318. (NOTE THE ROOM!!) In the case that the course enrollment reaches its maximum of 25 and you still wish to register for the course, please send an email to the instructor, Matt Choptuik, or come and see me in person in Hennings 403. (East Penthouse). |
| Maintained by choptuik@physics.ubc.ca. Supported by CIAR, NSERC, CFI, BCKDF and UBC |
