Re: Computational Physics

[David Bowman <dbowman@tiger.gtc.georgetown.ky.us>]

> Can the members of this list inform me of what they would think a
> course titled "Computational Physics" means and includes in terms of
> course topics, content and experiences?
>
> This would be a 2 hour a week lab at the junior-senior level course in an
> independent high school. The school has success with passing AP Calculus
> based Physics classes.

I have a hard time seeing how a Computational Physics course would be
implemented at the High School level.  When I was at the University of Akron
I taught two different Computaional Physics courses.  One was a summer course
for Graduate Students and the other was for Jr. level undergraduates.  These
courses had approximately equal mixtures of computer programing, numerical 
analysis, and advanced topics in mathematical physics.  The students did
computer programing projects that applied the techniques of numerical
analysis to some aspect of physics that was too intractable to solve with
pencil and paper.  The topics ranged over a wide variety -- from simple root
finding and extremization problems, to the solution of systems of
differential equations, to boundary value problems and PDEs, to signal
processing and data massaging.  It's hard to see how these topics could fit 
in at the HS level.  Even most of the topics in Gould & Tobochnik's book on
the subject have the same problem--it's too advanced for High school level.

David Bowman
dbowman@gtc.georgetown.ky.us