PHYS 220 - Computational Methods for Phys/Engn

Prerequisites/Corequisites: Take PHYS-201. (Required, Previous).
Credit Hours: Min: 3; Max:

Description: An introduction to the computational tools and numerical methods used in physics and engineering. Students will use both spreadsheets (e.g., Excel) and numerical packages (e.g., Python) to obtain numerical solutions to a wide variety of physical problems, including: motion with air resistance, oscillations, nuclear decay, planetary motion, and circuit analysis. Students will learn to work with data, including reading data from a file, plotting, and fitting. Methods used will include finite difference solutions to ordinary differential equations, Monte Carlo simulations of random events, numerical solutions for coupled algebraic equations, and the use of both symbolic packages and numerical methods for computing derivatives and integrals.