[Edu-sig] Re: Advice: is python suitable?

[Doug Holton]

> This is semi off-topic, so I'd better introduce myself :-)
> I'm studying physics at the University of Southampton, and joined this list 
> as I hope to use my final year project to create physics simulations in 
> Python to aid students, or (even better) write course material to teach the 
> students how to think about the physics concepts (and program at the same 
> time...).  That is still a year away, and I've not experimented much with 
> Python yet to see how feasible it would be to do this kind of thing.

It looks like the course is more focused on programming the mathematical 
aspects of the physics, and not so much on visualizing what is going on, 
except for maybe a plot of the numbers.  It is more about creating 
simulations for a physicist rather than a student.

So that means for the course you wouldn't for example need to use 3D to 
visualize a simulation.

You could get through the course just fine using the Python module 
numarray (for matrix algebra) and matplotlib for plotting:
http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/numarray
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/

But you should definitely check out Java as well.  This library is 
specifically designed for creating physics simulations:
http://www.opensourcephysics.org/
http://developers.coedit.net/ComputerSimulation

As another alternative to Python, you can use .NET/Mono compatible 
libraries
http://developers.coedit.net/DotNetProgramming
for things like matrix operations:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=c%23+matrix+operations
or plotting
http://www.netcontrols.org/scpl/
http://zedgraph.sourceforge.net/
http://csharp-source.net/open-source/charting-and-reporting

I've been using boo, a .NET compatible language very similar to Python:
http://boo.codehaus.org/