Partnership for Integration of Computation into Undergraduate Physics

These materials introduce the widely used Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) model for COVID-10 epidemiology calculations. Calculations are carried out by finite difference methods. Complete Mathematica and Jupyter notebook implementations are provided but a spreadsheet calculation will work as well. Learning Objectives: I. After completing the first part of these notes, students will be able to describe the SIR model and explain how the model is implemented using finite difference methods. They should be able to explain how the infection results are affected by different values of the infection rate coefficient and the recovery rate coefficient. II. After completing the second part of these notes, students will be able to describe how making the infection rate coefficient time-dependent can model the effects of quarantining, wearing masks, and social distancing can reduce the impact of the pandemic and the effects of early or later implementation of those strategies. They will also be able to model the effects of removing those restrictions too soon in the evolution of the pandemic.