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.
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.