Practices
10 Practices
An Overview of the Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) Guide
August 29, 2022 by Todd ZimmermanThe EP3 guide provides steps for improving your physics curriculum, including a section on how to intentionally integrate computation into your program.
integrating computation, ep3, why integrate
PICUP Capstone Report
July 11, 2022 by Marcos D. Caballero, Larry Engelhardt, Alexis V. Knaub, Michelle Kuchera, Marie Lopez del Puerto, Brandon Lunk, Kelly Roos, Todd Zimmerman, Editor: Bob HilbornA short summary of the 2021 PICUP Virtual Capstone Conference Report, along with links to the report itself.
A Welcome to Let's Code Physics
March 17, 2021 by W. Brian LaneThe Let's Code Physics YouTube channel has many tutorials freely available for you to integrate into your physics course. Designed for physics courses of any level, these tutorials introduce physics concepts and computational methods together to help your students explore interesting problems that would otherwise remain inaccessible.
python, intro classical, intro e&m, numerical methods, labs, tracker
Numerical Integration of Newton's Equation of Motion
January 30, 2021 by H. Gould, J. Tobochnik, and W. ChristianNumerical integration methods from Appendix 3A of An Introduction to Computer Simulation Methods 3rd Ed., by H. Gould, J. Tobochnik, and W. Christian (2007).
numerical_integration, numerical_methods
Key Resources on Getting Started
November 30, 2020 by PICUPThis is a selection of recorded workshops on getting started with Jupyter, Ocatve/Matlab, spreadsheets, Glowscript, and p5.js.
glowscript, matlab, octave, p5.js, spreadsheets, excel, jupyter, python
Introducing Computation: A Laboratory Approach
November 4, 2020 by Kevin Adkins & Jennifer BirrielIntroductory physics lectures are generally short on time and finding time to integrate computation isn't trivial. One alternative is to move the computational exercises to the laboratory portion of the course and replace a few traditional labs with computational labs covering the same material. Here, we describe our computational laboratory implementation and present two complete exercises.
labs, excel, spreadsheets, arduino, intro e&m, intro classical
Spreadsheet Computation in Introductory Physics Labs
July 24, 2020 by Jennifer Birriel & Ignacio BirrielIntegrating computation into first year physics courses can be a challenge, especially given the students' comfort with programming. One solution is to integrate spreadsheet computation in your labs for data reduction and analysis. You can connect the language of computation with common spreadsheet terminology. Computation with spreadsheets is advantageous because Excel is widely available.
excel, spreadsheets, intro classical
Why Should You Integrate Computation
June 22, 2020 by PICUP"Contemporary research in physics and related sciences almost always involves the use of computers. [...] Computational physics has become a third way of doing physics and complements traditional modes of theoretical and experimental physics. [...] almost all undergraduate students who take physics courses will use computational tools in their future careers even if they do not become practicing p
why integrate, integrating computation
Capture, Code, Compare: Integrating computational modeling with video analysis
March 9, 2020 by W. Brian LaneCapture, Code, Compare activities combine hand-on labs with computer modeling. Students use video tracking to capture the motion of an object, code a model that reproduces the behavior of the physical system, then compare the quantitative results of the video analysis with the results from the computer model. I'll go through an example of one of my activities in an introductory mechanics course.
labs, tracker, intro classical
So You've Decided to Use Python - What's Next?
September 18, 2019 by Todd ZimmermanOnce you've made the choice to use Python as the programming language in your course, you still have a lot of decisions ahead of you. I'll lay out the choices along with what I chose I why I chose it.
python, glowscript, jupyter, trinket, vpython
