Description
This second edition increases the universality of the previous edition by providing all its codes in the Java language, whose compiler and development kit are available for free for essentially all operating systems. In addition, the accompanying CD provides many of the same codes in Fortran 95, Fortran 77, and C, for even more universal application, as well as MPI codes for parallel applications. The book also includes new materials on trial-and-error search techniques, IEEE floating point arithmetic, probability and statistics, optimization and tuning in multiple languages, parallel computing with MPI, JAMA the Java matrix library, the solution of simultaneous nonlinear equations, cubic splines, ODE eigenvalue problems, and Java plotting programs. From the reviews of the first edition: "Landau and Paez's book would be an excellent choice for a course on computational physics which emphasizes computational methods and programming." - American Journal of Physics
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For this book/CD-ROM package for undergraduates, Landau (physics, Oregon State University) adopts the view that computational physics is a subfield of computational science. Most topics are presented in the form of problems and projects. In order to emphasize algorithms and programming as well as physics, students are required to write, debug, and run programs, visualize the results, and express in words what has been done and what can be concluded. Although it's possible to use a problem-solving environment, such as Maple or Matlab, to solve many of the problems, the author recommends that students 'get their hands dirty' by writing programs in a compiled language. Bare bones programs are provided in the text and on the companion CD-ROM. The CD-ROM also includes animations and interactive applets based on the text materials, as well as sample data files and visualization scripts. For this second edition, programs in the text are given in the Java, chosen for its useful error messages, its universality, and its free program development environments. The CD-ROM contains corresponding versions of the Java programs in C, Fortran 77, and Fortran 9X. New and expanded topics covered in this edition include visualization, wavelet analysis, molecular dynamics, and computational fluid dynamics. There is also a more extensive discussion of computational biology and complex systems. The book can be used in a course on computational physics which emphasizes computational methods and programming. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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