Physics 331/332: Computational Physics

Westminster College

Spring 2012

• Instructor
  • Dr. Douglas Armstead
  • Hoyt 124
  • 724-946-7201 or x7201
  • armstedn@westminster.edu
  
  
• Meeting
  • Hoyt 118 and electronics lab
  • Day: Monday and Wednesday and Friday
  • Time: 4:20-5:20
  • Course Syllabus
  
  
• Texts
  • Title: Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences
  • Author: Mary Boas
  • Edition: 3rd
  • ISBN: 0-471-19826-9
  
  
  • Title: Computational Physics
  • Author: Giordano and Nakanishi
  • Edition: 2nd
  • ISBN: 0-13-146990-8
  
  

• Homework
• Course Supplementals
  • A Crash Course in Mathematica.
  • One choice for a computer symbolic solver is Sage which is open source (free) software. It is not as intuitive as Mathematica, but neither does it have the price tag of Mathematica.
  • The compiler and software development system we are using in the lab are freely available. For best results you should install the compiler before the integrated development environment (IDE).
    • The compiler comes as part of MinGW. The software is most easily downloaded from here but the most uptodate version can be downloaded here, (select Automated MinGW Installer then mingw-get-inst then the most recent version and download the .exe file) the current version is MinGW-5.1.6.exe and provides the GNU C++ compiler (g++). Be sure to accept the default locations the installer suggests and in addition to the default installation install both g++ and msys when propted to do so.
    • Eclipse is an integrated development environment that comes in a variety of flavors including C++. It is available for download here. and is called "Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers". Eclipse is written in java and requires a Java Runtime Environment After you install eclipse (and JAVA SE) it should automatically detect the MinGW software and be ready to work.