Computational Exercises for Electromagnetism

(General Physics III):

Introduction
Prof. Dirk Grundler
October 2019, EPFL

Goals and Objectives

For the course GP3, we aim at exploiting simulations and computational exercises
to enhance the learning experience. Students will receive further information in
the lecture and exercise classes as well as problem sets for computational exercises.
They are based on Easy Java Simulations (Ejs) provided by ”Open Source Physics
Project (OSP)”. We follow typically questions and instructions like those which
are asked in the downloaded Java scripts. These questions will be marked by red
asterisks, ∗ ∗ ∗. Questions without this marker are designed by the lecturer. The
main goal of the problem sets is perfectly stated on the Homepage:
”Much of experimental and theoretical physics cannot be done without the aid of
computers. The OSP Collection seeks to provide education on computation and mo-
deling for undergraduate students. The use of computers allows students to study
problems that are difficult and time consuming, to visualize their results, and to
communicate their results with others. We believe that the combination of compu-
tational physics and computer modeling with theory and experiments (as discussed
in lectures) can achieve insight and understanding that cannot be achieved with
only one approach.

Installation (see details in an extra pdf file)

(i) In order to open the Java applets it is required to install Java Runtime on the
relevant system (PC, tablet, ..). Java Runtime can be download and installed freely
from here. (ii) To test an applet on should visit the website Capacitor Lab, download
the applet and run it on the system with Java Runtime. One finds three tabs
which contain simulations about capacitors. (iii) To answer the problems in OSP,
in most of the cases one needs to answer the physics. However, for some special
problems on OSP the student needs to find a bug in the source codes of the Ejs
scripts and fix it to get physically reasonable simulations. For this purpose one
needs to download and install Easy Java/JavaScript Simulations (version EjsS-5.3) by
following the instruction. After these steps, to get familiar with Easy Java/JavaScript
Simulations we offer a tutorial file and instructions based on this file. For more
information, please read the following manual on beginner introductions about Easy
Java Simulations:
• Introduction to Easy Java Simulations