Welcome to the PICUP computational physics pedagogy workshop!
An outline of the workshop:
1. Introduction to PICUP
2. Group work: projectile motion with drag in spreadsheets
We will start from a blank spreadsheet and create a simulation of dynamical motion.
3. Group work: orbital dynamics in Trinket/Glowscript
After the introduction, we’d like you to do a short exercise on orbital dynamics. This will illustrate the use of Glowscript/Trinket, a browser-based VPython interpreter.
4. Group work: simulating pendula in Google Colab
Now, we’ll do an exercise involving a computer simulation of a pendulum in Google Colab. One of the great things about Colab is the ability to mix text and code, so the whole exercise and its instructions are in that notebook itself. You will need to “Make a Copy” of the notebook for yourself so you can edit your own version.
4. Discussion
We’ll conclude with a discussion of how computational tools can:
- … help students learn the same kinds of things we were already teaching them, but more quickly and deeply
- … allow students to learn new things we weren’t able to teach them before
We might also explore:
- … what you think about the “minimally-working code” approach to computational integration and its strengths and weaknesses
- … what you think about spreadsheets, Trinket/Glowscript, Google Colab/Jupyter, and other programming environments
- … any thoughts you have about the use of AI in physics education or programming
