Each chapter of the text provides a large number of exercises which can be assigned as homework or serve as the basis for student projects.
The Pascal source code has been provided for all programs and a number of exercises suggest specific ways the programs can be modified; ranging in difficulty from the alteration of a single procedure to extensive additions for ambitious projects. The intent is to develop physical intuition and a deeper understanding of the physics, not computational skills.
The simulations are programs that include complex, often realistic, calculations of models of various physical systems, and the output is usually presented in the form of graphical (often animated displays.
Many of the simulations can produce numerical output---sometimes in the form of output files that could be analyzed by other programs. The user generally may vary many parameters of the system, and interact with it in other ways to study its behavior in real time. The use of the term simulation should not convey the idea that the programs are bypassing the necessary physics calculations, and simply producing images that look "more or less" like the real thing.
The simulations will complement the analytical work in each course in a manner that is mutually reinforcing. Considerable analytical work is necessary to modify the programs or to really understand the results of a simulation---an important use of the simulations is to suggest conjectures that may then be verified, modified, or falsified analytically.
Written by:
William M. MacDonald, University of Maryland, College Park,
MD 20742, wmacd@erols.com
Jaroslaw Tuszynski,
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, jtuszyns@vms1.gmu.edu