These assignments should be completed before the first class meets on June 21st. These assignments will not be turned into the lecturers for a grade but the material presented for the week will assume you have completed and understood these assignments. If you have any trouble completing these assignments, please contact the lecturers (Julie Butler: [email protected] or Morten Hjorth-Jensen: [email protected]).
Review of classical mechanics concepts like
- Newton's laws and the basic equations of motion
- Forces, potentials, and how they are related
- Two-body problems, especially the Earth-Sun system
- Harmonic Oscillator
Suggested readings and pre-recorded lectures will be added soon. We will be working out of the Taylor's classical mechanics textbook (a PDF copy will be provided) but you can use any classical mechanics textbook you feel comfortable with that covers the same material.
We assume that you have no knowledge of the Python programming language coming into this week and have prepared a series of four tutorials covering basic concepts. If you have already had a course on Python, feel free to skip over any material you know. If you are new to learning Python there are some additional resources at the end of Notebook 1 that may also be helpful. These are longer than the notebooks assigned below but give you a more through introduction to the Python programming language.
- Notebook 1: Introduction to Scientific Python
- Notebook 2: NumPy for Scientific Python
- Notebook 3: Matplotlib for Scientific Python
- Notebook 4: Doing Physics With Python (includes a basic review of classical mechanics)
- Review these lecture notes (Will be added by Saturday afternoon!) and make sure you understand all of the pre-course Python notebooks, but especially Notebook 4.