Pointers for using Mathematica in PHYS 2502 Mathematical Physics

Installing Mathematica

Go to the ITS Website for Mathematica and you'll find instructions on how to install Mathematica on your desktop or laptop computer. This is a site-licensed software package, so you'll need to log on with your Temple AccessID.

That page also includes some materials from Wolfram Research that can help you learn Mathematica, but the materials below might be easier for you to come to speed on for this course.

A Simple Template

You are welcome to start your Mathematica notebooks with this simple template. I recommend that you include a significant amount of documentation in your notebooks, as I've done here, a line or two of text before each cell to explain what it is supposed to do.

Resources from Old Courses

I taught a course at Temple on using Mathematica for physics problems. You'll find lots of examples there, as well as many exercises if you want to use them for practice.

The Temple course was an evolution of a course I taught at RPI many years ago. The course website still appears to be active, so you are welcome to look through that as well.

Mathematica References

I actually find the built-in (or online) documentation very useful. You can also make good use of the Mathematica Stack Exchange.

There are also very many books on how to use Mathematica. For the Mathematica labs, I will use exercises from A Mathematica Primer for Physicists, which I wrote, so of course I think it is a great book.

You might also look through the "Physics" section of Wolfram Books.