Cornell University
Department of Physics
Physics 480/680, Astro 690 February 22, 2000
Computational Physics, Spring 2000
Course Information
Lecturer:
Tomás Arias, Clark 522, x5-0450 (muchomas@ccmr.cornell.edu)
Lecture: TR 8:40-9:55, 104 Rockefeller Hall
Office hours: M 3:00-4:30
Grader:
Nicholas Bailey, 616 Clark Hall (npb3@cornell.edu)
Computer lab hours: to be determined to minimize student conflicts
Course Administrator:
Sandra D. Scaglione, 121 Clark Hall, x5-7563 (sds2@cornell.edu)
Textbook:
Numerical Recipes (in Fortran or
C): The Art of Scientific Computing, 2 
Edition
(Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Lectures and Computer Sessions:
The only way to learn scientific computing is to ``Just do it.''
Accordingly, this course is designed to be a hands-on learning
experience. The lecture time on Tuesdays will be used as a
traditional lecture to introduce new material. The lecture time on
Thursdays (except for the first week) will take place in the
computer laboratory, where we will run our codes interactively to
learn, hands-on, how to improve their performance.
Getting the most from the lectures:
Students generally get more out of a lecture if they have a sense of
the material to be covered and some questions already formed in their
minds. Selected short readings will be assigned at the top of each new
homework assignment. It is highly recommended that this reading be done, even
if cursorily, before attending the corresponding lecture.
Homework:
Beyond the short readings and the lectures, the third element of the
learning process is working the weekly homework. Because the purpose
of this course is to develop the skill of writing effective software
to solve scientific problems, the homework will consist of completing
computer programs which perform an assigned task. We will grade this
homework primarily by sitting down with you and testing your code in
real time. There will be very little, if any, written homework.
Homework will be assigned each Tuesday at the end of lecture and will be due and graded in the interactive computer session on Thursday of the next week (9 days later). As we will learn important lessons by running our programs together in these sessions, it is extremely important that you complete these assignments on time. Toward this end, we will schedule a computer laboratory with the course grader for all students who wish to attend.
Students should feel free and are highly encouraged to discuss and ask conceptual and practical advice on the homework from each other and from the teaching staff. The assignments are modular and will come together to form codes which predict the behavior of matter from basic physics. As most of the fun is in doing this yourself and as this course is graded on these programs, we expect the students, after such discussions, to write their own software and not to copy complete programs directly from each other. Because the assignments do build upon each other, if your assignment doesn't work, you may use someone else's module in future homework.
Exams:
This course has no exams.
Grades:
This course is S/U only. To achieve a grade of S, you must either
complete or demonstrate that you have made full effort to complete all
but two of the assignments on time.
Good luck!!!
This semester you will learn how to apply one of the keystones of
modern science, quantum theory, to predict the behavior of matter
ab initio, from first principles. It is a pleasure for us to teach
this course. We wish you all a productive, enjoyable and stimulating
semester.