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Semester Project: Due May 10

Project expectations

The semester project is intended to give you the opportunity to exercise the physics, numerical algorithms, and Java programming skills you have acquired by doing the homework assignments, and to integrate them to study an interesting problem of your choice.

For the semester project, you should

research the problem by carefully studying the relevant material in the textbook, and following up with references cited and/or material available on the Web;
design and write a Java program from scratch, if possible with a graphical user interface, and use your program to generate simulation data to answer the question posed in the project description;
and, write a project report which describes the physics, the numerical methods used, your Java program, a summary (preferably using graphs or tables) of the simulation data, and your conclusions.

The project will account for approximately four homework assignments. Your project report should therefore contain approximately four times as much material as a typical homework assignment, and you should plan to work on your project for approximately one month.

Suggested project topics

You may (a) choose one of the following suggested projects from the textbook, (b) choose some other project from the textbook (any chapter) which interests you, or (c) choose one of the Suggestions for Student Research Projects on the textbook web site. Please send me an email phygons@acsu.buffalo.edu by Friday, March 30, with a brief (one or two paragraph) project proposal (project chosen, what you hope to accomplish, and references you plan to consult). Feel free to email or talk to me at any time after you have started working on your project.

Chapter 12: §12.4 Diffusion controlled chemical reactions. There is plenty of project material in Problems 12.16 and 12.17, and Project 12.2 on pages 407-409 (which involves solving ordinary differential equations - Fall semester).
Chapter 16: Problem 16.5 The two-dimensional Ising model using the demon algorithm. You may want to play with Creutz's xising program (available in ~/phygons/phy411-505/ on UBUnix) for ideas on designing your Java program). This is a starred ^* problem, which is a little more challenging than other problems. To make it a project you can supplement the suggestions on page 556 with Problem 17.3 on page 590 (also a starred problem) by modifying your demon algorithm program to include an external magnetic field H.
Chapter 17: Interesting projects in this chapter:
- Project 17.3 Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in the planar model, OR
- Project 17.5 Ground state energy of the Ising spin glass.
Chapter 18: §18.7 Diffusion Quantum Monte Carlo. Understanding the theory in this section and doing Problems 18.15 and 18.16 provide adequate material for a project.
Chapter 15: Project 15.1 Cellular automata spring-block model of earthquakes.

Questions or comments: phygons@acsu.buffalo.edu