How to Use Python to Teach Physics

I've been teaching myself Python for a while now and I really enjoy it and the things I can do with it. I found this article below interesting...

How to Use Python to Teach Physics

I RECENTLY FACILITATED a workshop for high school physics teachers in South Africa (two workshops actually—one in Johannesburg and one in Cape Town). The goal of the workshop was to introduce teachers to using python in physics. Since this was my first python-physics workshop, I feel I should share the details and some of the things I learned.

The Workshop Content

This was a four hour workshop so I had plenty of time (or so I thought) to let the teachers actually work on some python code. I started off with an introduction and short lecture on the basic idea of numerical calculations. After that, I would start with some example code (maybe complete or maybe incomplete) and then give the teachers time to work on some “homework” questions about that code.

You can find all my workshop notes (with links to code) in this Google doc. Yes, I probably should have used something other than a Google doc, but more on that later. But let me go over the basic outline.

• Start with an object moving at a constant velocity and in one dimension. Go over the code and then give the participants an opportunity to change the code to answer some homework questions. Note: I decided to start off with very simple code. The results are printed out and there are no graphs and no 3D elements.
• An object moving in 1D with a constant acceleration. This is essentially the same as the program above but with a non-zero acceleration.
• Introduction to graphs. First, I show how to add a graph to the same constant acceleration problem and then I give the teachers a problem with two moving objects and they use a graph to find when these objects meet.
• Mass on a vertical spring. This is a short mini-lecture in which I show both how to model the force due to a stretched spring and then how to make a python model of a mass oscillating on a vertical spring. I show what the output should look like and then give the participants code with some parts missing. After they get the program running, there are some questions to suggest things they could change.
• Vectors and vector operations. This is just a demonstration of how VPython handles vectors. I have a sample code, but I don’t give them any questions to work on. Instead we just move to the next thing.
• Introduction to 3D objects. I show the VPython objects: sphere, box, arrow. After that I show a simple example of a ball tossed in the air (straight up) with 3D visualizations. There is no homework for the participants, this is just a demo.
• Projectile motion. The teachers are given the program of the ball tossed in the air (from the previous example) and then they need to make it a program with a ball tossed at angle.
• I have more programs to go over, but in both workshops we were running out of time. I showed a demonstration of projectile motion with air resistance and orbital motion.

Again, all of these starter programs are in the resource document. That document also contains a link to the presentation I used in the workshop as well as other useful links.

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