Mechanics worksheets using Python notebooks.
This is a set of computational physics projects developed for the 2nd year Mechanics course I teach at Thompson Rivers University (TRU).
The projects are aimed at students who have had 1st year physics and calculus and have been introduced to at least one programing language. Students are not expected to have had any previous experinece with Python, but should be familiar with basic programing concepts such as variables, if statements and for loops.
The projects consist of Jupyter notebooks in which the main concepts are presented and students are gradually introduced to the project questions.
Instructors are welcome to adopt and/or modify the projects for their own classes. If you are an instructor and would like to adopt the projects in your class, you can contact me directly for the solutions.
We have tried to make the projects self-contained enough that a self-learner can do the work provided they do some reading on the theory. The textbook we employ at TRU is Analytical Mechanics by G.R. Fowles and G.L. Cassiday, Thomson Learning Inc., 7th edition (2005). Any intermediate textbook on mechanics will give you the necessary backgroud, however, some of the problems at the end of the projects are assigned from that text.