Sep 10
We talked about workflow, plotting, and
Jim showed an gnuplot example :
We also talked for awhile about what we're doing
this term, and where we're starting.
Jim suggested a few weeks on numerical differential
equations, starting with the exact pendulum with friction.
By next week, Alex is going to look at :
- where exactly is the "critical value" for the friction
- how the size of the time step affects the accuracy
- how does runge-kutta work as a numerical method - does it allow larger time steps than the simpler approach?
Future possible topics :
- quantum stationary states, "shooting" method
- diagonalizing matrices in quantum mechanics, e.g. \( \frac{1}{2} k x^2 + \lambda x^4 \)
- fast fourier transform (definitely)
- ... we'll see
Alex found a book in the library that covers some
of this - title/auther ?
