{"id":879,"date":"2006-12-04T11:13:51","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T11:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/04\/relativity-and-mathematica\/"},"modified":"2006-12-04T11:13:51","modified_gmt":"2006-12-04T11:13:51","slug":"relativity-and-mathematica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/04\/relativity-and-mathematica\/","title":{"rendered":"Relativity and Mathematica?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next term, I’m teaching our sophomore-level “Modern Physics” class again. “Modern Physics,” in ecuation terms, really means “Early 20th<\/sup> Century Physics”– it’s a couple of weeks of Special Relativity, followed by several weeks of basic Quantum Mechanics, with a mad 2-3 week sprint at the end where I try to cover as much material as possible relating to applications of Relativity and QM.<\/p>\n

One of the things I did last year with this class was to try to introduce a little computational work using Mathematica. It’s a useful tool for our students to learn about, and it allows you to discuss some problems that can only be done numerically. As with most things that I try for the first time, it was ok, but not great, and I think I really need to spend more time introducing the students to Mathematica, and integrating it into the class a little more thoroughly.<\/p>\n

I’ve got a fair number of examples of quantum-mechanical problems that can be solved using Mathematica, so I’m probably ok there, but the problem is those first two weeks. I’d really like to get them going early, but I don’t have many ideas for ways to use Mathematica that are relevant to Special Relativity. There are a few really basic things that will serve as a good introduction to the program– have them learn how to define functions and make graphs by looking at the Lorentz factor γ as a function of velocity, and that sort of thing– but nothing beyond that really leaps to mind.<\/p>\n

But, this is one of the nice things about having a blog read by so many really smart people who are susceptible to flattery: I can ask my readers. So, really smart readers who are susceptible to flattery, any suggestions of things to study about Special Relativity that would make good Mathematica exercises?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next term, I’m teaching our sophomore-level “Modern Physics” class again. “Modern Physics,” in ecuation terms, really means “Early 20th Century Physics”– it’s a couple of weeks of Special Relativity, followed by several weeks of basic Quantum Mechanics, with a mad 2-3 week sprint at the end where I try to cover as much material as… Continue reading Relativity and Mathematica?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}