PHYS-4810: Computational Physics

 Schedule - Fall, 2005

 

Class

Date

Topic

Key Concepts

1

8/30

Introduction to MATLAB

 

2

9/2

Projectile Motion

Euler’s method for ODEs

3

9/6

Simple Pendulum

Problems with Euler’s method

4

9/9

Simple Pendulum

Runge-Kutta Methods

5

9/13

Damped Oscillator

Runge-Kutta Methods

6

9/16

Driven Pendulum

Adaptive Runge-Kutta

7

9/20

Chaos: Lyapunov Exponents

Lyapunov Exponent

8

9/23

Chaos: Strange Attractors

Phase Portrait, Poincare Section

9

9/27

Chaos: Period Doubling

Feigenbaum parameter

10

9/30

Orbital Motion

Binary stars and planets

11

10/4

Digital Fourier Transforms

Sampling theorem, FFT

12

10/7

Digital Fourier Transforms

Aliasing and Windowing

 

10/11

NO CLASS  -  MONDAY SCHEDULE

13

10/14

Power Spectra

Linear vs nonlinear oscillations

14

10/18

Wave Packets

Wave Packets

15

10/21

Windowing

Windowed data

16

10/25

Amplitude Modulation

Optical signals

17

10/28

Dispersion in Wave Packets

Uncertainty principle; dispersion

18

11/1

Potential Theory

Numerical integration

19

11/4

Potential Theory

Laplace’s Equation

20

11/8

PDEs

Heat Equation

21

11/11

Canceled

 

22

11/15

Nuclear Weapons

Diffusion with reactions

23

11/18

Laplace Equation

Relaxation Methods

24

11/22

Schrodinger Equation

Periodic boundary conditions

 

11/25

NO CLASS  -  THANKSGIVING

25

11/29

Canceled

 

26

12/2

Schrodinger Equation

 

27

12/6

Schrodinger Equation

 

28

12/9

Schrodinger Equation

 

11/4

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