Related papers: Simulating central forces in the classroom
In recent years, computing has become an important part of the way we teach and learn physics. Teachers, both at high school and college levels, now use computational activities in many of their courses. Physics departments are offering…
Much of the research done by modern physicists would be impossible without the use of computation. And yet, while computation is a crucial tool of practicing physicists, physics curricula do not generally reflect its importance and utility.…
If a large Quantum Computer (QC) existed today, what type of physical problems could we efficiently simulate on it that we could not simulate on a classical Turing machine? In this paper we argue that a QC could solve some relevant physical…
We describe a method for deepening a student's understanding of basic physics by asking the student to express physical ideas in a functional programming language. The method is implemented in a second-year course in computational physics…
This paper reports the use of Tracker as a pedagogical tool in the effective learning and teaching of projectile motion in physics. When computer model building learning processes is supported and driven by video analysis data, this free…
Simulating physical systems is a core component of scientific computing, encompassing a wide range of physical domains and applications. Recently, there has been a surge in data-driven methods to complement traditional numerical simulations…
The possibilities of robot control have multiplied across various domains through the application of deep reinforcement learning. To overcome safety and sampling efficiency issues, deep reinforcement learning models can be trained in a…
Incorporating computer programming exercises into introductory physics is a delicate task that involves a number of choices that may have an effect on student learning. We present a "hybrid" approach that speaks to a number of common…
This document is intended as a stand-alone textbook chapter to be used for introducing some functional programming concepts into a course in which the primary teaching language is Java. For details of the approach, please see the paper…
The intention of these notes is to give a mathematical account of how I believe students could be taught to think about functional programming languages and to explain how such languages work.
Students taking introductory physics are rarely exposed to computational modeling. In a one-semester large lecture introductory calculus-based mechanics course at Georgia Tech, students learned to solve physics problems using the VPython…
We propose a bridge between functional and object-oriented programming in the first-year curriculum. Traditionally, curricula that begin with functional programming transition to a professional, usually object-oriented, language in the…
We present an investigation of game-like simulations for physics teaching. We report on the effectiveness of the interactive simulation "Real Time Relativity" for learning special relativity. We argue that the simulation not only enhances…
It is often assumed that few- and many-body systems can be accurately described by considering only pairwise two-body interactions of the constituents. We illustrate that three- and higher-body forces enter naturally in effective field…
The use of machine learning to estimate the energy of a group of atoms, and the forces that drive them to more stable configurations, has revolutionized the fields of computational chemistry and materials discovery. In this domain, rigorous…
Common approaches to control a data-center cooling system rely on approximated system/environment models that are built upon the knowledge of mechanical cooling and electrical and thermal management. These models are difficult to design and…
The object of this laboratory work: to explore dependence mass point oscillatory motion parameters in the following cases: - without resistance (free oscillations); - the resistance force is proportional to the velocity vector; - the…
We consider the Reactive Programming (RP) approach to simulate physical systems. The choice of RP is motivated by the fact that RP genuinely offers logical parallelism, instantaneously broadcast events, and dynamic creation/destruction of…
Microscopic stress fields are widely used in molecular simulations to understand mechanical behavior. Recently, decomposition methods of multibody forces to central force pairs between the interacting particles have been proposed. Here, we…
Quantum mechanics can seem like a departure from everyday experience of the physical world, but constructivist theories assert that learners build new ideas from their existing ones. To explore how students can navigate this tension, we…