Description
"…an excellent text for either a short course or self-study… Professor Napolitano has figured out what students really need, and found a way to deliver it… I have found everything he writes to be worthy of my serious attention…"
—Peter D. Persans, Professor of Physics and Director, Center for Integrated Electronics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Learn how to use Mathematica quickly for basic problems in physics. The author introduces all the key techniques and then shows how they’re applied using common examples. Chapters cover elementary mathematics concepts, differential and integral calculus, differential equations, vectors and matrices, data analysis, random number generation, animation, and visualization.
- Written in an appealing, conversational style
- Presents important concepts within the framework of Mathematics
- Gives examples from frequently encountered physics problems
- Explains problem-solving in a step-by-step fashion
Jim Napolitano is professor and chair in the Department of Physics at Temple University. He is the author of other textbooks, including co-author with Alistair Rae of Quantum Mechanics, Sixth Edition, also published by Taylor & Francis / CRC Press.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Solving Algebraic Equations
3. Derivatives, Integrals, and Series
4. Differential Equations: Analytic Solutions
5. Differential Equations: Numerical Solutions
6. Vectors and Matrices
7. Basic Data Analysis
8. Fitting Data to Models
9. Numerical Manipulations
10. Random Numbers
11. Animation
12. Advanced Plotting and Visualization
Appendix A _ Additional exercises
Appendix B _ Shorthands
