This course is a laboratory in the use of the Maple computer mathematics program to do physics. With the advent of fast and cheap computers, programs like Maple will replace hand calculators and mathematical handbooks (like integral tables) for most physics students. Physics departments have already seen this happening in a rather random and unplanned way, so this course was invented to provide students with an introduction to the use of this powerful program. Once you learn it you will be hooked and you will wonder how you ever got along without it. This will especially be so if you don't just have Maple available on the department computers, but have it also on your own desktop computer, or even better, on your laptop. The time is rapidly approaching when laptops for physics students will be as common as slide rules were in olden times. If there is any way to pull it off, you ought to get a laptop .
Here's how the course will run. You and a lab partner will work through the chapters in this notebook at your own speed, assisted by the instructor and the TAs. The assigned problems for each 3-hour laboratory period are given in the last chapter of this book ( Laboratory assignments ). The only lectures will be answers to questions that are a little involved. There are no exams and no written homework. When you have finished an assigned problem, call a TA over and show them what you have done. Then go on to the next one. For Physics 230 there are three term projects required, but they are relatively simple: I want you to work three significant homework problems from math or physics courses that you are taking using a Maple worksheet. It would be a good idea to check with a TA or the instructor ahead of time to see if we think the problem is significant. You will get extra points for degree of difficulty.
Special note: do not do your homework in this notebook . Every once in a while I will make changes to this notebook and give you a new copy to use. The new edition will be worthless to you if all of your hard work is in the old version. So do all of your work in another file and leave this one the way you got it. A nice way to handle this is to have both this worksheet and your problem worksheet open simultaneously; then use the Tile, Horizontal, or Vertical option under Window on the toolbar (you get to choose which you like the best). Then you can read this worksheet and your problem worksheet on the same screen. This makes copying with the mouse from here to your assignment especially easy and you can read about what should be happening in the text while seeing what is actually happening in your own work.
You will be glad if you save your solutions to the problems in this text. You will find that your worked examples from this course will be of great value when you encounter similar problems in later courses.
This is a rather large piece of computer text and it is easy to lose track of things you might see once and want to find later. To help with this problem there is an index of hyperlinks to Maple topics in the next section. In addition you can find specific words or phrases in this text by using the Find selection under the Edit item on the toolbar.
And when things go wrong there are two debugging sections in this text. One is in Chapter 1 where debugging is introduced. The second is after Chapter 9 where specific errors and their cures are illustrated and discussed. To help you quickly go to this second debugging section there is a hyperlink to it in almost every subsection of the worksheet. And to help you go back to where you came from there is a set of chapter hyperlinks at the top of the debugging section. So if you need to quickly go to another chapter, first go to the debugging section, then click on the desired chapter hyperlink. Here, I'll show you. Click here on Debuggingto go to the debugging section .
Finally, please contact me about errors in the text or trouble with Maple. The text errors I will fix and the Maple troubles will be added to the Debugging section at the end of the book. My email address is Ross_Spencer@byu.edu.
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