Physics 20 Reading List for the week of 11/29-12/3/2004

Finally the last week of classes! Although I got your feedback only through the TAs, I've enjoyed having all of you in this lab. Please come back next term (or in the Spring term) for ph21. You can have an idea of what we'll be doing at the ph21 webpage (you'll see that the assignment you're getting this week used to be the first ph21 assignment).

Don't forget to turn in your course evaluations: in the past, this lab has benefited greatly from feedback from your peers. I would also welcome your direct feedback about the assignments, the software and hardware environment in the lab, the TAs, and whatever you want. Just e-mail me (replace the spam-avoiding {at}).

Your first reading assignment for this week is about numerical root-finding methods: Secs. 9.0, 9.1, 9.2 (to p. 357 only), and 9.4 of Numerical Recipes.

On the golden ratio, see the MathWorld entry by Eric Weisstein. In fact, you'll probably find more on the web than you'll ever want to know about the golden ratio and the related Fibonacci numbers, which seem to be a favorite subject for term papers in high school. (By the way, the standard aspect ratio for Mathematica plots is once more the golden ratio...)

Finally, I wanted to alert you to Computing in Science and Engineering, an excellent IEEE publication on computational techniques and computer simulation. Have a look at the Mar-Apr 2004 issue on the frontiers of simulation, and in particle at the article by L. P. Kadanoff, "Excellence in computer simulation" [Comp. Sci. Eng. 6, 57 (2004)]. You may have to log in through the Caltech Library page to actually access the articles.