COURSE: Special Topics: Monte-Carlo Techniques, PHY410

PROFESSOR: MIRON KAUFMAN, OFFICE: SI-116, TEL.6872436

Email:

m.kaufman@popmail.csuohio.edu

My goals in this course are to teach:

• elements of modeling of physical and biological phenomena;
• the software MathCad;
• basic statistics concepts.

The prerequisite for this course is Thermal Physics PHY474. There is no required textbook. Materials will be delivered weekly during the lecture.

The course consists of:

• lectures each Thursday at 2PM in RT1501;

• weekly computer projects by using MathCad 6.0 or 7 software package available in the Mathematics Department Lab RT1501. It is also available in the Library Data and GIS Lab on first floor of Rhodes Tower and in the Physics Computer Lab SI-119.

WEEK 1: MathCad Tutorial; Random Numbers; Applications:

WEEK 2: Descriptive Statistics; Distributions; Histograms

Week 3: Numerical methods to solve differential equations; Applications: Celestial Mechanics

WEEK 4: Radioactive Decay and Poisson distribution

WEEK 5: Random walks; Entropy Law; Einstein-Smoluchowsky Law of diffusion

WEEK 6: No lecture

WEEK 7: Cellular Automaton; Fractals; Game of Life

WEEK 8: Ising Model and Metropolis Method

WEEK 9: Neural Networks

WEEK 10:Image Processing. You will need the following file bitmap file.

GRADING is based on the percentage of computer projects successfully completed and on attendance record. Lecture attendance is obligatory. You should save each MathCad worksheet on a disk which is due at the end of the quarter. A printout of each worksheet is due weekly.