Mathematica by Wolfram Research

We’ll be using this very robust software to gradually incorporate computational elements into the upper division physics courses.  You may already be familiar with Maple from your courses in the math department.  You’ll recognize some similarities when you begin using Mathematica, but there are many more features available in this software.

Part of the intent of this program is whether students want to pursue graduate school or head right into the job market after graduation, computer skills will be expected of top-notch candidates and learning to program in Mathematica achieves that goal.  If you learn to use this software as a supplemental tool now, you’ll be ahead of the pack after graduation, and it can enrich your studies now as well, which forms the other part of the program’s intent.  It’s kind of like carrying a pocket knife – the more you use it the more often you reach for it to solve a problem.

The strengths of this particular software over other options like Matlab or Maple, I think, are that it has thousands of built-in symbols to perform common tasks, a fantastic “help file” in the Wolfram Documentation to connect you with them and their uses, and it is more user-friendly.  That’s of course only my opinion – everybody thinks whatever they know how to use is the easiest to learn.  Once you’re familiar with the basics, the Wolfram Documentation helps you extend your skills to accomplish any task you can dream up.  Once you accomplish that task, you can write up a full report with executable code interspersed and make a presentation.  You can even output your write up as a LaTeX file and do so much more.  You’re also plugged into a vast network of verified data, which you’ll see a bit of in the videos below.

I’ll add more focused tutorials as the need develops.  In the meantime, many of the demonstrations can be viewed and manipulated if you navigate to the Wolfram site and download the free player.

My Mathematica Tutorials

I’m slowly adding to a folder of tutorials that will hopefully cover most of the common tasks (~90%) to get you started in our first mathematica inclusive courses, Quantum Mechanics I and Thermodynamics.  The folder is here.  It’s shared with anyone having a RIC email address, so the files themselves are not able to be edited in the drive.  You’ll need to download them to have a copy you can edit.  I’m going to add exercises to each chapter’s subfolders as soon as I get the time.  If you prefer to interact with the software in the lab only (you’re unwilling to fork over the money to buy or rent a license), you can still view the notebooks from home if you download the cdf player (see above).  The files are saved in both notebook (*.nb) form and in the computable document format (*.cdf) in the folder.

The tutorials folder is here (same link as above).

I’ll continue adding tutorials beyond the most basic functionalities to give students a leg up on graduate school or industrial careers, where these types of skills really pay off.  Below this section are a collection of other people’s resources for getting started.  Those of a particular disposition may find different looks at the introductory stuff helpful (it is very difficult to remember what you didn’t know when you started, so different tutorials focus on different stuff, unavoidably), but I aim to make my tutorials in the above linked folder self-contained.  If you have suggestions I’d love to hear them.

In an effort to show off some cool stuff to get you interested in learning how to learn to code in Mathematica as well as other uses for the thing, I’ve included some cool examples and miscellaneous items in this folder.  There are some gems in there as well as some code that is so dense I will have to take a few minutes to explain how it works if you ask…which you are, of course, encouraged to do.  Expect the volume of content in there to grow fast as long as we’re doing online delivery of all RIC courses – I’m finding a lot of things I can’t draw both quickly and well with the standard options, and I’m thankful I already know what I’m doing, more or less.

Other Peoples’ Tutorials (rest of page)

First Ten Minutes

Here’s a link to the Wolfram site to get you started in your first ten minutes with Mathematica.

More videos, tutorials, etc. will follow.  I’ll use this page as a general tools and tips, getting-started type of resource and you’ll be seeing more course-specific things coming from your professors.

General Getting Started Stuff

First, there are many of these on the Wolfram site.  Specifically, the Getting Started With Mathematica channel of the Wolfram Screencast and Video Gallery, is a fine place to look for more than what I’ve selected below.

Here’s an hour-long introduction to the core language features.  There’s even a button there to download the notebook they’re working on in the video.

And this one is Steven Wolfram talking about how great his language is.  It’s actually fairly inspiring and highlights what one could do with Mathematica given the time and need.  Take a look if you can find the time.  While our computational projects will be fairly straightforward, it’s useful to have some idea of how big the untapped pool of functions is.

Hands On Start – follow along as this video helps you create, for yourself, some of the things you saw in the above videos.

Resources

How To Topics – step by step instructions for things – note that this clearly is a web-based version of the Documentation Center content.

Demonstrations Project – have a really cool notebook you think other people would like to see or use?  Not yet?  Millions of other people have – and they’re available to download…free.  Find anything  from a fractal generator, to an E field map of a dipole, to a thing that tracks the Jet Stream.  Even beyond the cool factor, and some of these things are unassailably cool, you can often download the original source notebook.  This is one of the most efficient ways to climb up the learning curve.

Here’s a link to Stephen Wolfram’s new book An Elementary Introduction to the  Wolfram Language.

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All links live as of 2020.04.16 – if you find a dead one, let me know please