 | Feedback and Problems
Accomplishments Three courses made substantial use of the computing
facility in the last quarter.
 | Materials
Simulations Jim Sethna's course, developed explicitly to promote and utilize
the new Intel machines, was taught again this spring. We had over twenty participants,
including one faculty member, ten of the brightest young physicists, and ten other
graduate students from engineering. We met for six hours per week in two afternoon lab
sessions, implementing state-of-the art simulations techniques spanning four topics.
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| Physics 214, the large third-semester engineering course on waves, particles, and
fields, used this facility for two weeks solidly in the spring, introducing their class to
interactive simulations, using the simulations galileo, pythag, huygens, and schrdgr. In
addition, they are using the facility during the summer for all four labs. |
| Karl Berkelman used the facility regularly in his honors Waves course, Physics 218. |
We installed X-servers on all the machines, which were used to connect to the Theory
Center to do our crack-growth simulations.
Next Quarter Plans
We intend to get the software developed at the Theory Center to run the new NT cluster
installed in B3, to use the machines during periods when they are not actively used in
teaching.
Contacts
James P. Sethna, Professor, Department of Physics
Ralph B. Robinson, Programmer Analyst, Physics Department
Equipment Utilization
The machines are popular both in teaching and with the computer-literate newer graduate
students, who do much of their work there.
Feedback
Developer's Studio C++ is an excellent software development environment. It is the sole
rationale we have found for shifting from Unix/Linux to the Windows platform. We had an
excellent experience with it in our course and are continuing to enjoy working with it in
research contexts.
Last modified on: 06/30/99
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