Overview and Authoring Guidelines

The PICUP Collection of Exercise Sets

The fundamental unit of the PICUP collection of educational materials is the "Exercise Set". All Exercise Sets are peer-reviewed and adaptable for faculty use. Standard Exercise Sets use numerical approaches that can be adapted to multiple platforms and Specialized Exercise Sets take advantage of particular computational platforms.

Exercise Type Any
Course Level Any
Subject Any
Programming Language Any
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10 Exercise Sets

Mathematical / Numerical Methods
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Bead on a Wire

First Year and Beyond the First Year Mechanics and Mathematical / Numerical Methods

Developed by Steve Robinson

Example Implementations: Glowscript and Spreadsheet

Curve Fitting

Beyond the First Year Experimental / Labs and Mathematical / Numerical Methods

Developed by Eric Ayars

Example Implementation: Python

Error Propagation

First Year and Beyond the First Year Experimental / Labs and Mathematical / Numerical Methods

Developed by Earl Blodgett

Example Implementation: IPython/Jupyter Notebook

Monte Carlo error propagation

First Year Mathematical / Numerical Methods

Developed by Andy Rundquist

Example Implementations: Mathematica, Easy Java Simulations, and Python

Separation of Variables in Cartesian Coordinates

Beyond the First Year Electricity & Magnetism and Mathematical / Numerical Methods

Developed by Jordan McDonnell

Example Implementation: IPython/Jupyter Notebook

Separation of Variables in Spherical Coordinates

Beyond the First Year Electricity & Magnetism and Mathematical / Numerical Methods

Developed by Jordan McDonnell

Example Implementation: IPython/Jupyter Notebook

Lattice Elasticity, the Vibrating String, and Nonlinearity

Beyond the First Year and Advanced Mathematical / Numerical Methods and Waves & Optics

Developed by Walter Freeman

Example Implementations: C/C++ and Easy Java Simulations

Finding the Earth-Sun Lagrange Points

Beyond the First Year and Advanced Mechanics, Mathematical / Numerical Methods, and Astronomy

Developed by Nicholas Nelson

Example Implementation: Python

Visualizing Effects of a Gravitational Wave with a Ring of Test Masses

Advanced Mathematical / Numerical Methods, Waves & Optics, and Astronomy

Developed by Deva O'Neil

Example Implementation: Glowscript

A Stochastic Model of Birth-Death Population Dynamics

Beyond the First Year and Advanced Mathematical / Numerical Methods, Thermal & Statistical Physics, and Biophysics

Developed by Brandon Lunk

Example Implementations: Glowscript, IPython/Jupyter Notebook, and MATLAB