SCM Computing Tools  

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Aims and objectives

Syllabus

Basic information

Coursework

Computing

Weekly schedule

Deadlines

Marking scheme

Experiments

Homework

Student Handbook

Use of student PCs

PCs running under Microsoft Windows are available in the laboratory for your use in this and other courses. There are additional PCs elsewhere in the College running the same system. A wide variety of software, both commercial and locally-written, is available. You should feel free to use these computers at any time. There are laser printers available for making paper copies.

Graphing and histogramming

At various times you will need to use the computers to plot data as graphs or histograms, and to do line or curve fitting. There are a number of application programs available to you. You can use the following Windows programs:

PhysPlot was written in the Physics Department with this course in mind. It produces suitable graphs and histograms, and provides line and curve fitting. It is straightforward to use but has a few limitations. PhysPlot can be found in the Physics Applications program group. You can download a copy of PhysPlot for use on your own computer from: http://hepwww.ph.qmul.ac.uk/PhysPlot

Microsoft Excel is a very powerful spreadsheet program which has extensive calculational, graphing and analysis capability. It has much more flexibility but is more complicated, and is also less oriented towards scientific graphs than PhysPlot. It is widely used in the commercial world. Excel is found in the Microsoft Office program group, in the Start menu.

You should try out these programs, or any others, and use whichever you feel happy with.

Word processing

An essential part of the course is to write two formal reports. These must be prepared using a word processor.

Microsoft Word is the recommended application to use for word processing. You will find it in the Microsoft Office program group, in the Start menu. Like Excel it is fairly easy to use at a simple level, but there are many sophisticated and subtle features, some of which can save you a great deal of time and effort and are definitely worth learning about if you use it a lot. However, you are free to use any word processing application that you are happy with.

E-mail and the web

The course home page on this website will be used for transmitting news of any changes of arrangements, etc. As homework is marked and returned, the web will also be used for posting solutions. You should look at the home page regularly, about once per week.

Individual contact between students and the course organisers is often most efficiently done by e-mail. You will be notified if you are in danger through not attending the course or not handing in work on time, and you can use e-mail to inform us of what might be causing such problems. We are very aware that e-mail is not a subtle medium and is often no substitute for face-to-face discussion, but it is an effective way to convey simple facts and queries without having to find someone (who may be halfway around the world at the time) in person.

General comments on computing

Do not be afraid to experiment – the worst that can happen is that you lose the data you have typed in (though saving it frequently will help to prevent that).

Always protect against losing files by backing them up to either floppy or Zip disks. Loss of files will not be considered a valid excuse for not handing in work, and can cause a lot of needlessly duplicated effort.

Finally, it is also worth noting that the programs used for the lecture demonstrations on statistics are available in the Physics Courses program group.

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