Week 1:                Introduction to programming and computing as a scientific tool

Part 1: Python

Week 1:                Getting to know the Python Environment, simple commands      

Week 2:                Variables and Identifiers, Statements, List Basics

Week 3:                Operators, Arithmetic and Precedence, Operators Relational, Logical and Membership, Conditionals

Week 4:                Loops, Nested Loops, Functions, Modules

Week 5:                List Manipulation, List slicing, List Slicing with Steps, List Exercises

Week 6:                Strings, String Methods, Strings Practice, Multidimensional Lists, Dictionaries

Week 7:                File I/O, Tuples, Formatting

Week 8:                Namespaces and Scope of Variables, Recursion, Error Handling

Part 2:  Matlab

Week 9:               Quick Conversion from Python: The Matlab environment, Matlab Help, simple commands and calculations, variables, Vectors and Matrices, importing and exporting Data, array calculations

Week 10:             Writing scripts in Matlab: Functions, logical arrays, decision branching, loops.

Plotting, graphics, fitting.

Part 3:  Final project

Week 11-13:       Will include independent learning of additional material

Part 4 :  Final exam

Course Requirements:

Exercises, quizzes and tests (30%), final project (30%), final exam (40%).

Computers for Physicists

Dr. Yan Benhammou

Obligatory course for first year students

Second semester 1 hour lecture + 2 hours exercise

 An introduction to the contemporary use of computers by physicists.  Basic programming techniques will be introduced from the beginning; No previous knowledge of programming language is assumed. The course will provide a practical introduction to the use of computers as a major tool in Physics.

The course will provide the students a briefe introduction to basic concepts both in hardware (PCs, workstations, network) and software (OS, file managements, compilers, libraries, scientific calculations and graphical representation of results).

The course will be based on practical exercises in C language running in the university UNIX cluster. The exercises will take place in the School of physics computers classroom. Students will get a remote access to the university cluster from their home computers and will be able to practice some of the exercises on their home (even windows based) computers using for example the devcpp compiler available at http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

All the lectures and the exercises are available for the students at the Virtual TAU course site - http://virtual2002.tau.ac.il. 

The lectures were filmed on 2006 and are available at the University Video site

There is a lot of literature just for example:

• B. W. Kernighan and D. M. Ritchie, The C Programming Language, PRENTICE-HALL, 1978.
• W. H. Press, Numerical Recipes in C, Cambridge, 1992.
• P. L. Devries, A First course in Computational Physics, Wiley, 1994.
• M. L. De Jong, Introduction to Computational Physics, Addison-Wesley, 1991.

Introduction for the C language and the Unix relevant commands which will be distributed to the students is sufficient for the course level.

Computers for Physicists

Dr. Yan Benhammou

Obligatory course for first year students

Second semester 1 hour lecture + 2 hours exercise

 An introduction to the contemporary use of computers by physicists.  Basic programming techniques will be introduced from the beginning; No previous knowledge of programming language is assumed. The course will provide a practical introduction to the use of computers as a major tool in Physics.

The course will provide the students a briefe introduction to basic concepts both in hardware (PCs, workstations, network) and software (OS, file managements, compilers, libraries, scientific calculations and graphical representation of results).

The course will be based on practical exercises in C language running in the university UNIX cluster. The exercises will take place in the School of physics computers classroom. Students will get a remote access to the university cluster from their home computers and will be able to practice some of the exercises on their home (even windows based) computers using for example the devcpp compiler available at http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

All the lectures and the exercises are available for the students at the Virtual TAU course site - http://virtual2002.tau.ac.il. 

The lectures were filmed on 2006 and are available at the University Video site

There is a lot of literature just for example:

• B. W. Kernighan and D. M. Ritchie, The C Programming Language, PRENTICE-HALL, 1978.
• W. H. Press, Numerical Recipes in C, Cambridge, 1992.
• P. L. Devries, A First course in Computational Physics, Wiley, 1994.
• M. L. De Jong, Introduction to Computational Physics, Addison-Wesley, 1991.

Introduction for the C language and the Unix relevant commands which will be distributed to the students is sufficient for the course level.