Weekly update and plans for week 40

Dear All, we hope you are all doing well. Here comes our weekly update with plans etc.

Last week we finalized the discussion of eigenvalue methods, with a final discussion on Householder transformations, how to find the eigenvalues of a tridiagonal matrix and finally the iterative Lanczos method for large matrices. We started then with ordinary differential equations (chapter 8 of the lecture notes).

This week we continue with ordinary differential equations and remind ourselves about the basics of the Euler methods (Euler-Cromer++)  and present the energy conserving Velocity-Verlet method (which belongs to the Verlet family of methods).

We use these methods  to discuss and present project 3 (which is also part of the final grade). Project 3 is available at the GitHub address of the course, go to for example http://compphysics.github.io/ComputationalPhysics/doc/web/course and scroll down to project 3. Or just go to the folder http://compphysics.github.io/ComputationalPhysics/doc/web/course

Thursday's lecture will thus be devoted to the Euler and Verlet families and the first baby steps of project 3.

On Friday we discuss the Runge-Kutta family of methods as well as how to structure project 3 in terms of classes. Object orientation is actually rather useful here. Example codes that we discuss are available from the folder 

https://github.com/CompPhysics/ComputationalPhysics/tree/master/doc/Programs/OOExamples/solar-system

We will discuss object orientation on Friday.

The lecture slides at http://compphysics.github.io/ComputationalPhysics/doc/pub/ode/html/._ode-bs000.html cover most of the theory we will discuss. They contain also a discussion of project 3.

Best wishes to everybody,

Aksel, Anders, Kaspara, Maria, Morten, Rene' and Sebastian