[Edu-sig] Advice: is python suitable?

[Peter Bowyer]

Hello list,

This is semi off-topic, so I'd better introduce myself :-)
I'm studying physics at the University of Southampton, and joined this list 
as I hope to use my final year project to create physics simulations in 
Python to aid students, or (even better) write course material to teach the 
students how to think about the physics concepts (and program at the same 
time...).  That is still a year away, and I've not experimented much with 
Python yet to see how feasible it would be to do this kind of thing.

This year I'm taking a course in computational physics, which allows the 
use of any programming language.  The notes however are skewed towards the 
department's in-house languages (variations on BASIC and C).  I'm hoping 
one of you could look at the course notes and tell me if there's anything 
here that is not possible to do in Python?  They are at 
http://www.phys.soton.ac.uk/teach/year3/notes/ph314/notes/phys3006b.pdf for 
the BASIC version, and 
http://www.phys.soton.ac.uk/teach/year3/notes/ph314/notes/phys3006c.pdf for 
the C version.

Thanks,
Peter

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