Welcome to Physics 430!

Winter 2010

Instructor: John S. Colton
 Intructor's email address:  (removed) Instructor office hours/location: 3:00-4:00, 5:00-5:30 pm Wed,  N335 ESC
 
 TAs: Daniel Jensen and Quinn Norris
 TAs' email addresses:  (removed)TAs' office hours: TBA

Announcements

• 27 Apr 2010 - There was an error in the previously-posted grades, which affected about 50% of the reported final exam grades (but only one students' letter grade; I emailed him separately). Corrected final course grades posted below.
• 22 Apr 2010 - Final exams graded, final course grades posted below. Check for accuracy!
• 9 Apr 2010 - Posted current grades. These now include everything but the final exam. Check for accuracy!
• 7 Apr 2010 - Posted current grades, which include exam 2 scores.
• 11 Mar 2010 - Posted current grades
• 22 Feb 2010 - Posted current grades, which include exam 1 scores.
• 11 Feb 2010 - Posted current grades. I will likely post grades every week or two from now. Please check your grades and let me know ASAP if you detect any errors.
• 11 Feb 2010 - Posted all of the old reading quizzes (for reference, if you missed class that day). I'll try to keep those up-to-date from now on.
• 4 Feb 2010 - Posted solution to Lab 5.4(b) as an example of good commenting.
• 6 Jan 2010 - Colton office hours modified
• 31 Dec 2009 - Syllabus modified slightly
• 22 Dec 2009 - Website set up, now open for business. If I add things to the website, I will probably post announcements here in this section.

Lab Manuals

There are two manuals for this class, both available for download from the departmental Physics 430 website. Here are the manuals:

• Introduction to Matlab, which you should have from Physics 330. This will be a useful language reference manual to help you as you program in Matlab

• Computational Physics 430, the lab manual for this class. Note that there was a substantial revision to this manual at the end of summer 2009, so in your hardcopy and/or pdf version, make sure you have the manual dated Aug 6, 2009. (The date is shown on the second page.) This manual contains the material for each laboratory period. 

They are both available as pdf files through the links provided, or as hardcopies from the BYU Bookstore. If you want a paper copy of either of these it is generally cheaper to buy them from the Bookstore than it is to print your own (it is inappropriate for you to print a copy of this manual on department printers without paying for the printing costs).

M-file code templates

The "Computational Physics 430" lab manual refers to some m-file code templates available for download. Those pieces of code can be found on the departmental Physics 430 website.

Syllabus

• Physics 430 syllabus - Winter 2010 - I will pass out hardcopies of the syllabus on the first day of class. Here it is in pdf format for your convenience.

Sample Solutions

• Here's my solution to Lab 5.4(b), posted as an example of good commenting.

Reading Quizzes

• Here are all of the past reading quizzes, for your reference in case you missed a quiz on a particular day: Quiz 1 | Quiz 2 | Quiz 3 | Quiz 4 | Quiz 5 | Quiz 6 | Quiz 7 | Quiz 8 | Quiz 9 | Quiz 10 | Quiz 11 | Quiz 12 | Quiz 13

Handouts

• Here's the handout from Lab 11 (the week I was out of town)

Current Grades

• 11 Feb 2010 grades
• 22 Feb 2010 grades (includes exam 1 scores)
• 11 Mar 2010 grades
• 7 Apr 2010 grades (includes exam 2 scores)
• 9 Apr 2010 grades (includes everything but the final)
• 22 Apr 2010 grades (final course grades, barring errors)  - a student caught an error, so these are slightly wrong
• 27 Apr 2010 grades (final course grades)

Exam Solutions

• Exam 1 solutions (code only, not descriptions): problem 1 | problem 2B | problem 2C
• Exam 2 solutions: probably available by request. Let me know if you need to look at my solutions.