Abstract
An important goal of any physics course is student understanding of the key concepts. Another goal is to provide the students with the tools needed to do the physics. Pragmatic concerns make it difficult to achieve both of these goals. Many physics courses overemphasize theory, formal manipulations, and problem solving, and do not sufficiently explore related aspects of experimental and computational physics. The de-emphasis of experimental physics is partly due to the large costs both in money and time. The relative lack of computational physics is due to inertia, the amount of beautiful theory that we wish to show our students, and the time commitment involved in developing appropriate educational materials and in student time. Also, the time spent writing, modifying, and using computer programs can be excessive.
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References
The following example and typical student response is adapted from M.E. Loverude, C.H. Kautz, and P.R.L. Heron: Am. J. Phys. 7O, 137 (2002).
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W.G.V. Rosser : An Introduction to Statistical Physics. (Ellis Horwood Limited, 1982). To our knowledge, this text made the first use of the Einstein model in the context of counting microstates and illustrating the concepts of energy transfer and the nature of thermal equilibrium.
Our present course is based on H. Gould and J. Tobochnik: Thermal and Statistical Physics, unpublished notes available at http://stp.clarku.edu/notes
See for example, H. Gould and J. Tobochnik: Introduction to Computer Simulation Methods, 2nd edn. (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA 1996).
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About 20 applets and their source are available at http://stp.clarku.edu/simulations
Another source of applets can be found at the Web site of Dennis Rapaport, http://www.ph.biu.ac.il/rapaport/java-apps/
See the various links from the Java Grande Forum Web site, http://www.javagrande.org/
The Java-based Open Source Physics library can be downloaded from http://www.opensourcephysics.org/
More Information on Vpython can be found at http://vpython.org
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Gould, H., Tobochnik, J. (2004). Using Simulations to Teach Statistical Physics. In: Landau, D.P., Lewis, S.P., Schüttler, HB. (eds) Computer Simulation Studies in Condensed-Matter Physics XVI. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 95. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59293-5_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59293-5_23
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