Introduction to Programming for Physicists

PHYS20161 Introduction to Programming for Physicists 10 Semester 1 Undergraduate Level 2 Clive Dickinson Unit coordinator Lloyd Cawthorne Unit coordinator 1 FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' Middle part of Bachelors ' European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 5.0 Introduction to Programming for Physicists Introduction to Programming for Physicists The aim of the course is to give a practical introduction to computer programming for physicists assuming little or no previous programming experience. On completion successful students will:<ol> <li>Be able to write programs in Python to aid them in practical situations they will face in their degree course and future work in physics or in other fields.</li> <li>Implement basic programming theory to write efficient code.</li></ol>  Elements of Programming – (3 weeks)<ol> <li>Introduction to Python</li> <li>Variable types and lists</li> <li>Operators</li> <li>Input / output</li> <li>Conditional expressions</li> <li>Loops</li> <li>Introduction to debugging, testing and errors</li> <li>Functions</li> <li>Style and PEP8</li></ol>Basic Python libraries and validation – (2 weeks)<ol> <li>Python Modules</li> <li>Introduction to numpy</li> <li>Numpy arrays, built-in functions and indexing</li></ol>Introduction to algorithms and visualisation – (3 weeks)<ol> <li>Algorithms and their uses</li> <li>Basic manipulation and visualisation of data</li> <li>Read and write files</li> <li>Data validation</li> <li>Root finding</li> <li>Basic optimization algorithms</li></ol> Introduction to scientific programming libraries – (3 weeks)<ol> <li>Advanced uses of numpy and matplotlib</li> <li>Introduction to scipy</li> <li>Using inbuilt functions</li></ol>  0 Other 100% 5 BlackBoard quizzes worth 7% each due weeks 1-3,7 and 8. 1st assignment worth 15% Final assignment worth 50% Standard late penalties apply of 10% deducted per day late for each assessment.  Feedback is offered orally by demonstrators in the lab, automated responses in the quizzes, and specific written comments for each assignment. Follow-up units:PHYS20872: Theory Computing ProjectPHYS20762: Computational PhysicsPHYS30762: OOP in C++Some experiments in Y3 lab (PHYS30280) require computing.Many MPhys projects require at least some element of computing (PHYS40181/2) N Hill, C. Learning scientific programming with python (Cambridge Uni. press) Lectures 10 Practical classes & workshops 66 0 24 Note: Laboratory facilities are not available for resits.  A student who has failed may be permitted to submit further assessments, based on laboratory work already carried out, in order to pass the course unit.