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Start/Contents


Introduction to

Computational Physics

Franz J. Vesely
University of Vienna


This regular course extends over the entire academic year and consists of a weekly 3 hours of lectures and 2 hours of workshop. It is designed for students from the third year up.

My textbook  Computational Physics - An Introduction (Plenum 1994 and Kluwer 2001) is based on this course.

Note to teachers: If some of the Java applets that are part of this course material are of any use to you, you may copy and adapt them for your purposes, provided that you treat them according to the GPL rules. This means, among other things, that you cite the original source, and that you do not make commercial use of the resulting material.




Structure of this Tutorial:


  • Chapters 1-3: Basic Tools of Our Trade

    Most of the methods used by computational physicists are drawn from three areas of numerical mathematics which will be treated in Chapters 1-3:



    CALCULUS OF
    DIFFERENCES


    LINEAR ALGEBRA



    STOCHASTICS


  • Chapters 4-5: "Everything Flows"

    By this Herakleitean motto Newton stressed the importance of his "fluxion" calculus. In modern terms we might say "Differential Equations Everywhere." Chapters 4 and 5 will be devoted to the numerical treatment of:



    ORDINARY DIFFERENTIAL
    EQUATIONS


    PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL
    EQUATIONS



  • Chapters 6-8: Various Applications

    These sections are devoted to those areas of physics which have been most thoroughly transformed by the intensive application of numerical methods. These are:



    STATISTICAL
    MECHANICS


    QUANTUM
    MECHANICS



    HYDRODYNAMICS


  • Chapter 9: Appendix and Bibliography

    The limits of accuracy of computing machinery are discussed. Also, the useful technique of the Fast Fourier Transform is explained. Finally, the list of bibliographical references is given, along with a commented list of books on Computational Physics.



Table of Contents



vesely 2006

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