Computer Exercises and Course Materials
James P. Sethna
This site includes materials useful in some of the interactive exercises,
and also hints for the computer exercises (available both for
Mathematica and Python).
For python, we recommend the
Anaconda Scientific Python distribution.
One useful
additional step for speed when linear algebra is being done: set the
environment variable MKL_NUM_THREADS (e.g., 'export MKL_NUM_THREADS=4' if you run bash, or 'setenv MKL_NUM_THREADS 4' if you run csh or tcsh),
replacing '4' with some number <= the number of cores on your machine.
Hints and figures
- 1.5 'Stirling and asymptotic series'
- 1.6 'Random matrix theory'
- 1.7 'Six degrees of separation', Small world exercise hints
- 2.5 'Generating random walks'
- Molecular dynamics exercises: 2.4 'Perfume walk', 3.4 'Pressure computation', 4.1 'Equilibration', 6.1 'Exponential atmosphere', 10.2 'Pair distribution function and molecular dynamics', Molecular dynamics software
- 2.10 'Polymers and random walks' Self-Avoiding Random Walk simulation (Java applet from BU)
- 2.11 'Stocks, volatility, and diversification'
- Percolation exercises: 2.13 'Building a percolation network', 12.12 'Percolation and universality'
Percolation hints and writeup
- 4.3 'Invariant measures'
- 4.4 'Jupiter! and the KAM Theorem'
- 4.9 "Jupiter's Red Spot"
- 5.9 'Chaos, Lyapunov, and entropy increase'
- 5.12 'Rubber band'. (Bring rubber bands.)
- 5.13 'How many shuffles?'. (Bring decks of cards.)
- 5.16 'Fractal dimensions'
- 6.25 'Epidemics and zombies'
- 7.12 'Semiconductors': see "Semiconductors: The Big Picture"
- 7.24 'Is sound a quasiparticle': see "Quasiparticles in Physics"
- 7.27 'Heisenberg entanglement'
- Ising model exercises
- Systems Biology and Cellular Networks (start with the
overview of reaction networks)
- Avalanche models: 8.13 'Hysteresis and avalanches', 8.14 'Hysteresis algorithms', and 12.13 'Hysteresis and avalanches: scaling' Hysteresis and Avalanches simulation (Matt Kuntz's old windows binary; may not work)
- 8.15 'NP-completeness and kSAT'
- 8.22 'Metastability and Markov'
- 9.1 'Topological defects in nematic liquid crystals':
- 9.10, 'Nematic order parameter half space': Projective plane
for cutting and pasting. (Print it out double-sided. Bring scissors and tape.)
- 9.11, 'Pentagonal order parameter':
- 9.17, 'Fingerprints':
- 10.10 'Human correlations' Plot of subway riders, and matched grid graph for plotting correlations
- 11.1 'Maxwell and van der Waals' van der Waals P-V plot
- 11.7 'Origami microstructure'. (Bring scissors.)
- 11.11 'What is it unstable to? Maxwell equal area construction figure
- 12.9 'Period doubling'
- 12.14 'Crackling noises'
- 12.15 'Hearing the onset of chaos: Period doubling' (files courtesy
of Erich Mueller)
- 12.22 'Activated rates and the saddle-node transition'
- 12.23 'Biggest of bunch: Gumbel'
- 12.29 'The onset of chaos: Full renormalization-group calculation'
- 12.32 'Conformal Invariance'
- 12.33 'Pandemic'
James P. Sethna,
Christopher R. Myers.
Last modified: December 12, 2017
Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity,
available at
Oxford University Press.
