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Introductory Physics - Physics 150 Spring 2012

Physics 150 Practice Final Exam

Introductory Physics Laboratory - Physics 150 Spring 2012 (P. Spacher)

Physics 150 Laboratory Grading Spreadsheet

Laboratory Tools

Gnumeric Spreadsheet for Physics Labs

Calculator Manuals

Thermal Physics - Physics 375 Spring 2012

Physics 375 Syllabus

It is useful to learn how to use a computer algebra system such as Maple® or Mathematica® in the advanced physics courses. Maple® and Mathematica® are commercial products and are fairly expensive. However, there are a few free computer algebra programs available on the net. Macsyma, probably the oldest computer algebra system, was developed at MIT. The program evolved into several different versions, one of which was a commercial program that seems to have died only a few years ago. Another, Maxima, was developed with Department of Energy money and was released under the GPL relatively recently. You can get Maxima and wxMaxima for Windows and Mac OS X below.

Maxima 5.25.0 for Mac OS X

There is also a Maxima Home Page on Sourceforge .

Axiom is another computer algebra system, which you can read about and download from Axiom Home Page . Axiom used to be a commerical product but is now under GPL.

Some very good recent news is that the program Reduce is now free and open-source. Reduce is roughly forty years old, probably the second oldest computer algebra system. Reduce was written for high energy theoretical physics research. You can find a copy for Windows and Mac OS X on the Reduce Sourceforge page . Either Reduce or Maxima are worth learning and becoming proficient at using.

For more numerical work, the free software Octave is very useful. Octave is nearly 100% compatible with MatLab. You can download binary versions for Windows and Mac OS X below.