Computational Physics - Hardcover

Giordano, Nicholas J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0133677230 ISBN 13: 9780133677232

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1996

Synopsis

A textbook for an undergraduate physics course introducing basic numerical techniques and their application to a number of topics of interest to modern physicists. Assumes an introductory mechanics and enough calculus to be familiar with differentiation and integration. Based on the notion that students should write their own programs, but relents in discussions of various problems and algorithms. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

From the Publisher

Conveying the excitement and allure of physics, this progressive text uses a computational approach to introduce students to the basic numerical techniques used in dealing with topics and problems of prime interest to today's physicists.

About the Author

Nicholas Giordano obtained his B.S. at Purdue University and his Ph.D. at Yale University. He has been on the faculty at Purdue since 1979, served as an Assistant Dean of Science from 2000-2003, and is currently the Hubert James Distinguished Professor of Physics. His research interests include electrical conduction, superconductivity, and magnetism in ultra-small metallic structures, along with musical acoustics and the physics of the piano. Ideas for this book grew out of the course on computational physics that he developed and taught in the early 1990s. Professor Giordano earned a Computational Science Education Award from the Department of Energy in 1997, and in 2004 was named Indiana Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

Hisao Nakanishi earned his B.S. from Brown University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His Ph.D. research concerned scaling and universality in a geometric phase transition called percolation and he has been interested in scale-invariance ever since. During his first postdoctoral work at Cornell he was introduced to the problem of surface critical phenomena such as wetting phase transitions, and later at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he started working on the statistics of diffusion and polymers in earnest. .In 1992 Professor Nakanishi was a part of the team that won a Gordon Bell Prize for the application of parallel computing to a problem in polymer statistics. More recently he has also put on another hat as a developer of a computer-based interactive exercise system which is used by a few thousand students at Purdue each year.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0133677230
• ISBN 13: 9780133677232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 419