Computational Physics - 3rd/4th Year Option
By
Angus MacKinnon
a 26. September 2002 a
a 48 pages a
Course Description
The use of computers in physics, as well as most other branches of science and engineering, has increased
many times along with the rapid development of faster and cheaper hardware. This course aims to give the
student a thorough grounding in the main computational techniques used in modern physics. It is particularly
important in this course that the students should learn by doing. The course is therefore designed such
that a significant fraction of the students’ time is spent actually programming specific physical problems
rather than learning abstract techniques
a 4 Main Chapters
Ordinary Differential Equations
Partial Differential Equations
Matrix Algebra
Monte Carlo Methods and Simulation
Bibliography
Lapack Numerical Library n.d.
unix.hensa.ac.uk/pub/netlib/lapack/
Metropolis N, Rosenbluth A W, Rosenbluth M N, Teller A H & Teller E 1953 J. Chem. Phys. 21, 1087.
Numerical Algorithms Group n.d.
nag.co.uk:70/
Potter D 1973 Computational Physics Wiley Chichester. (Out of print, but several copies in the library).
Press W H, Flannery B P, Teukolsky S A & Vettering W T 1992 Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific
Computing Cambridge University Press Cambridge. (Full text available on the Web, except C++
version.).
nr.com/
Wilkinson J H 1964 The Algebraic Eigenvalue Problem Clarendon Press Oxford.
Wolfram S 1991 Mathematica—A System for Doing Mathematics by Computer Addison-Wesley Redwood
City, California
ISBN 0 201 51502 4
