Related papers: Six textbook mistakes in computational physics
This article discusses incorrect statements appearing in textbooks on quantum field theory (QFT); some of these mistakes also appear in the research literature. The focus is not on errors made by an individual author, but on conceptual…
This article discusses a number of incorrect statements appearing in textbooks on data analysis, machine learning, or computational methods; the common theme in all these cases is the relevance and application of statistics to the study of…
We argue that most advances in science and technology during the past and the present centuries rely on modern physics concepts developed in the early $20$th century. The reliance is so profound that any improvement of literacy of science…
Writing and argumentation are critical to both professional physics and physics education. However, the skill of making an extended argument in writing is often overlooked in physics classrooms, apart from certain practices like lab…
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…
The aim of this textbook is to bridge in regard of quantum computation what proves to be a considerable threshold even to the usual science trained readership between the level of science popularization, and on the other hand, the presently…
Computational thinking has been a recent focus of education research within the sciences. However, there is a dearth of scholarly literature on how best to teach and to assess this topic, especially in disciplinary science courses. Physics…
Computation is becoming an increasingly important part of physics education. However, there are currently few theories of learning that can be used to help explain and predict the unique challenges and affordances associated with…
Students often begin physics courses with misconceptions rooted in everyday experience and intuition, which can be resistant to change. While research has identified strategies for addressing misconceptions across physics, it remains…
There is a growing consensus that physics majors need to learn computational skills, but many departments are still devoid of computation in their physics curriculum. Some departments may lack the resources or commitment to create a…
This book is divided into two parts. In the first part we give an elementary introduction to computational physics consisting of 21 simulations which originated from a formal course of lectures and laboratory simulations delivered since…
This is part one of a series of four methodological papers on (bi)quaternions and their use in theoretical and mathematical physics: 1- Alphabetical bibliography, 2- Analytical bibliography, 3- Notations and terminology, and 4- Formulas and…
This is the 3rd version with major updates and revisions to the 2nd version of the same title. In this article we have collected and corrected some common mistakes made by Chinese students in writing astronomy and physics literature in…
This paper reviews connections between physics and computation, and explores their implications. The main topics are computational "hardness" of physical systems, computational status of fundamental theories, quantum computation, and the…
Finding good educational policies requires sound estimates of their potential effects. Methods for making such estimates, i.e. finding causal estimands, have made great progress in the last few decades. Nevertheless, serious errors in…
A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The…
The vast use of computers on scientific numerical computation makes the awareness of the limited precision that these machines are able to provide us an essential matter. A limited and insufficient precision allied to the truncation and…
Symbolic equations are one of the many representations used in physics. Understanding these representations is important for students because they are how students access knowledge in physics. In this paper I build off of the work by Redish…
Most physics textbooks at college and university level introduce quantum physics in a historical context. However, the textbook version of this history does not match the actual history. In this article, the first in a series of articles…
Computational thinking in physics has many different forms, definitions, and implementations depending on the level of physics, or the institution it is presented in. In order to better integrate computational thinking in introductory…