About galileo and the SSS Project

"galileo", an animated simulation of a pendulum, was written by James P. Sethna (see https://sethna.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna.html) for use in the Cornell engineering physics Waves course (Physics 214).

Galileo was one of the first to systematically study the behavior of the pendulum. It has been said that he first noticed that the period of the pendulum was roughly independent of its amplitude while watching a lamp swing in a cathedral in Pisa, and timing it with his pulse.

``galileo'' uses utilities developed by Robert Silsbee, Joerg Draeger, Russ Thompson, R. Barry Robinson, and others for the SSS modules, developed for teaching the undergraduate Solid State course at Cornell. The SSS programs are now available on the Web, and the text will soon be available from Cambridge University Press.

``galileo'' is based on previous computer labs, developed by Peter Lepage, Persis Drell, Mohammad Rezai, Bill Dimm, and probably several others at Cornell: the text of the assignment and the structure of the lab is due largely to them (but problems are of course my fault).

This program and all the documentation are copyrighted, copyright August 1996.

Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity, now available at Oxford University Press (USA, Europe).