Modelling physics with Microsoft Excel /
Modeling physics with Microsoft Excel
Bernard V. Liengme.
- 1 electronic document (96 pages) : illustrations.
- IOP concise physics, 2053-2571 [IOP release 1] .
- IOP concise physics. IOP (Series). Release 1. .
"A Morgan & Claypool publication as part of IOP Concise Physics"-Title page verso. "Version: 20141001"--Title page verso. EPUB version includes embedded videos.
Includes bibliographical references.
Random events -- Random walk and Brownian motion -- A random self-avoiding walk. Electrostatics -- Coulomb's law -- Electrostatic potential -- Discrete form of Laplace equation Applying statistics to experimental data -- Comparing averages -- Comparing variances -- Are my data normally distributed? Fast Fourier transform Superposition of sine waves and Fourier series -- Addition of sine waves; generation of beats -- Fourier series -- Parametric plots and Lissajous curves Approximate solutions to differential equations -- Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) -- Euler's method -- The Runge-Kutta method -- Testing for convergence -- Systems of ODEs and second-order ODEs Numerical integration -- Trapezoid rule and Simpson's 1/3 rule -- Centroid of a plane using Simpson's 1/3 rule -- Monte Carlo method I -- Monte Carlo method II -- Buffon's needle Temperature profile -- A formula method -- A matrix method -- A Solver method Equation solving with and without Solver -- The van der Waals equation : the fixed point iteration method -- van der Waals equation : using Solver -- Finding roots graphically -- Newton-Raphson method -- Using Solver to obtain multiple roots -- The secant method and goal seek -- The inverse quadratic method -- Solving systems of linear equations -- Solving a system of non-linear equations -- Closing note on Solver The pursuit problem -- The numerical approach -- Comparison with the analytical solution Projectile trajectory -- Football trajectory -- Adding air resistance Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Author biography
This book demonstrates some of the ways in which Microsoft Excel may be used to solve numerical problems in the field of physics. But why use Excel in the first place? Certainly Excel is never going to out-perform the wonderful symbolic algebra tools that we have today - Mathematica, Mathcad, Maple, MATLAB, etc. However, from a pedagogical stance Excel has the advantage of not being a 'black box' approach to problem solving. The user must do a lot more work than just call up a function. The intermediate steps in a calculation are displayed on the worksheet. Another advantage is the somewhat less steep learning curve. This book shows Excel in action in various areas within Physics. Some Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) has been introduced, the purpose here is to show how the power of Excel can be greatly extended and hopefully to whet the appetite of a few readers to get familiar with the power of VBA. Those with programming experience in any other language should be able to follow the code.
Professional and scholarly.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader or EPUB reader. Mode of access: World Wide Web. "The workbooks for this project were made using Excel 2013 but they should all work with the earlier Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 versions" --Preface.
Bernard Liengme attended Imperial College London for his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees; he held post-doctoral fellowships at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of British Columbia. He has conducted extensive research in surface chemistry and the Mossbauer effect. He has been at St Francis Xavier University in Canada since 1968 as a Professor, Associate Dean and Registrar, as well as teaching chemistry and computer science. He currently lectures part-time on business information systems. Bernard is also the author of other successful books: COBOL by Command (1996), A Guide to Microsoft Excel for Scientists and Engineers (now in its 4th edition) and A Guide to Microsoft Excel for Business and Management (now in its 2nd edition).