Final Exam
I will have your graded HW and Rec. in class tomorrow, and solutions will be posted as I can get them
scanned in. A few of the problem were marked OK, these were freebies and I gave points as long as the problem
was attempted. Good luck, and study hard on for the final exam!
Note: There is a small error on HW4, the sign on problem 13.42 should be + - not - + as indicated.
Rec #6 - Numerical Gauss
While Gauss's law is par none when you have some kind of symmetry in you problem often times you are faced with an integral that is impossible to evaluate. In this assignment, we will take a known result (a sphere) and see how good our numerical estimations can be. Please turn in your code and your graphs together.
Rec #5 - Taylor expansions for dummies!
Don't worry, you won't actually take a Taylor expansion, but you'll get to see how good these approximations are in the limit of "large distances". This one can be done in any programming language you choose (python recommended), but please turn in your code and your graphs together.
Midterm madness!
Update: Finished uploading partial solutions to the page, including some for HW 3 which has not been collected yet. Some of the proofs and graphs have not been included in the solutions, if you would like to see a detailed derivation of those problems come see me.
No rec. this week, just study for your upcoming midterm! Solutions to the HW should be posted to web in the near future, just keep checking.
Rec #4 - Counting game
Have a break and relax, this assignment is an easy one (worth 10 pts). You will be modeling a system with two possible 'states' using statistical mechanics. In a sense we are modeling the number of microstates in the system, and we should find that our experimental results match very closely with the theoretical ones.
Rec #3 - Breaking the law!
Have fun showing time-reversibility of Newton's equations! This project will show you that the world (according to Newton) can 'run backwards' in time. You will also encounter velocity verlet for the first time, just follow the equations and you will be fine. As always, if you need help just ask!
Rec #2 - Just a moment
Inertia that is... In this this project you will calculate the moment of inertia of a long thin rod, around an arbitrary point. The trick to this project is not a visual one, it is mathematical. Not only will you have to compute the answer analytically, but also you will learn a rudimentary numerical integration technique to solve the problem as an approximation.
Rec #1 - Angular Momentum
Your first assignment is a simple one. You' already made an n-body simulation of a solar system, now lets calculate the angular momentum of such a system. I've given you some sample code that simply models a 1/r^2 law so you can use that as a template. Remember to put your name in your code before you turn it in.
Welcome back
Hope you had a great vacation! For those who are new, my name is
Travis Hoppe and I'll be your TA for this class. I left up the PHYS
113 page up for reference (you can find a link in the sidebar). I'm
always around the computer lab, and usually open for questions. If you
need help in this class at any time, please let me know and you can come in for
office hours (or we can find a time for you to come in). If you need to
contact me send an email to:
hoppe@drexel.edu