Getting
started
The Mathematica website has
several good tutorials.
If you have never used Mathematica, browse the offereings at Mathematica tutorials -
screen broadcasts.
I like the 2-part Hands-on start
to Mathematica series.
The How-to
pages have many good examples and are relatively easy to navigate.
In this class we will
frequently use Mathematica to solve differential equations. See the
How
to work with differential equations website for examples of how to
do it.
Physists vs computers
For us the computer is only a
tool. Remember that it can do only
what you teach it to do and what you tell it to do.
Mathematica can do a lot of
abstract
calculations, like integrals, solving differential equations, etc.
But if an indefinite integral
does
not exist or the solution of a differential equation does not exist,
it will not be able to come up
with an analytical solutions. It will be able to give you a numerical
solution,
but in that case you have to
specify
numerical values for each constants, parameters you have.
Units: Be
consistent!
If you want your result in MKS units, make sure that every parameter
you specify is in MKS units. This
is the engineering approach. Physicists often come up with
their own "units" for each
problem.
If there is a characteristic length scale in a problem, like
the radius of the Earth when
discussing
satelite motion, it's much more convenient to measure
everything in that unit instead
of meters. We'll discuss this further in different applications.