Teaching

Teaching commitments for 2009 include:

• Convenor of the first year second semester course in physics for non-physics majors

• Classical Mechanics for first year engineers

• Electricity & Magnetism for first year non-physics majors

• Electricity & Magnetism for first year physicists

• Computational Physics for honours students

• First year labs

• Second year labs (Computational Physics)

• Third year labs

Teaching Resources Developed by Spencer Wheaton

Introductory Physics

• Vectors (Java)

  • Vector Components
  • Vector Addition

• Vibrations and Waves (Java)

  • Simple Harmonic Motion - Horizontal Mass-Spring System
  • Simple Harmonic Motion - Reference Circle
  • Travelling Waves - History Graphs
  • Standing Waves - Interfering Waves
  • Standing Waves - Infinite Fixed String
  • Beats

• Ray Optics (Javascript)

  • Concave Mirror
  • Convex Mirror
  • Converging Lens
  • Diverging Lens

Thermal Physics and Statistical Mechanics

• JavaScript Simulations

  • 1 - Microstates, Macrostates, Macropartitions and Probabilities
    • Click
  • 1 - Microstates, Macrostates, Macropartitions and Entropy
    • Click

• Guided Inquiry Worksheets and EJS Applets

  • 1 - Microstates, Macrostates, Macropartitions and Probabilities
    • Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF / Worksheet Word Document
  • 2 - Interacting Einstein Solids and Entropy
    • Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF / Worksheet Word Document
  • 3 - Two-State Paramagnet Multiplicity, Probability and Entropy
    • Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF / Worksheet Word Document
  • 4 - Einstein Solid Heat Bath
    • Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF / Worksheet Word Document
  • 5 - Einstein Solid Temperature Demon
    • Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF / Worksheet Word Document

Computational Physics

• Topic 1 - Basic Monte Carlo - Guided Inquiry Worksheets and EJS Applets

  • 1 - Random Generator Test Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF
  • 2 - Radioactive Decay (Poisson Statistics) Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF
  • 3 - Random Walk Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF
  • 4 - Rejection Sampling Method Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF
  • 5 - Transformation Sampling Method Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF
  • 6 - Combination Analytic-Rejection Sampling Method Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF
  • 7 - Metropolis Sampling Method Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF

• Topic 2 - Root-Finding, Interpolation and Extrapolation - Guided Inquiry Worksheets and EJS Applets

  • 1 - Smooth Particle Interpolation (SPI) Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF

• Topic 3 - Monte Carlo Integration - Guided Inquiry Worksheets and EJS Applets

  • 1 - Hit & Miss and Sample Mean Integration Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF
  • 2 - Importance Sampling and Sample Mean Integration Executable JAVA File / Worksheet PDF

The availability of these materials is part of UCT's OpenContent initiative.