. Introduction

Paul Abbott

Mathematica stores information in a kind of document called a Notebook which can contain text and graphics. The document you are now reading is itself a Mathematica Notebook. Notebooks are usually divided into sections consisting of groups of cells. When a group is closed, only the first cell in the group is displayed, and the group bracket is shown with a triangular flag at the bottom:

To open a group of cells, double-click on a closed group’s cell bracket. For more information on the structure of Notebooks have a look at Notebooks and Cells.

The purpose of computing is insight not numbers—Richard Hamming

The broad categories of computational physics are simulation, visualization and modelling. At a finer scale, computational physics embraces a wide range of areas
including numerical methods, algorithms, and data analysis. Simulation and modelling are usually taught by stressing numerical techniques — this course focuses on
using symbolic or computer algebra — in particular, using Mathematica. The objectives of this course are:

This course is a “hands-on” laboratory course consisting of a number of computational experiments worth a total of 60%. Assessment is continuous and the final (take-home)
exam makes up the remaining 40%.

. References

To learn more about Mathematica The Help Browser is the primary reference. Choosing Help. . . from the Help menu at any time gives you access to Mathematica’s on-line documentation. An overview of the capabilities of Mathematica is presented in the Tour of Mathematica section, and it is also suggested that you browse through the Practical Introduction section.

An up to date list of books about Mathematica is available at http://www.wolfram.com/bookstore. A number of Mathematica-related books can be borrowed from the FIZ library. The following resources are particularly useful:

. Book-keeping

.. Naming your Assignments

It is important that you name your solution Notebooks in the correct format.

1.your_initials.nb

As an example, 1.PCA.nb is the correct name for my work.

.. Exercises

All exercises look like

There are two ways in which you will asked to supply answers to questions.  Sometimes I will leave an answer field for you to write your solutions directly into the Notebook, e.g.,

You just need to position your cursor after the : and start typing. Much of the time though you will just enter a Mathematica command in the appropriate place and the output will be automatically recorded in the Notebook.

.. Submitting your Solutions

Please submit your assignment solutions to the appropriate numbered folder at ftp://ftp.physics.uwa.edu.au/incoming/.