[Edu-sig] Teaching programming to physics students

[André Roberge]

Peter Bowyer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> For those of you who remember my previous email, I have been given the 
> go-ahead to do my masters project investigating and developing techniques 
> to teach programming to second year physics undergraduates at the 
> University of Southampton.
[Snip]
> 
> I'm excited by this project, but starting to feel I've bitten off more than 
> I can chew, so any advice or suggestions you can make would be great.  Do 
> any of you have existing course material for teaching programming to 
> physicists (or engineers) or for teaching physics using programming which 
> you can share?
> 
> I have been requested to provide some coverage of alternative teaching 
> methods and techniques in my report.  If anyone can point me to resources 
> on this topic I'd be most grateful.
> 

My first suggestion would be to go through the edu-sig archives. :-)

Then, I would take a chance and order:
Python Scripting for Computational Science
Series: Texts in Computational Science and Engineering, Vol. 3
Langtangen, Hans P.

The author has a collection of slides here:
http://www.ifi.uio.no/in228/lecsplit/

If I may suggest one additional topic (which I didn't see after a quick 
scan, it would be to explore simple functional programming techniques, 
and "demonstrate" the fundamental theorem of calculus,
as inspired by Kirby.
(http://aroberge.blogspot.com/2005/04/computing-derivatives-using-python.html)

I wish I had some teaching material to offer you; perhaps in a few 
years, when I leave the administrative side of academia.

Good luck!

André