About pythag and the SSS Project

"pythag", a simulation for the one-dimensional wave equation 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).

The study of waves on strings stretches back at least to the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras (about 500BC) started a pseudo-religion based on the universal principles of Harmony, Proportion, and Justice. Their idea was that since pleasing chords are formed by changing the length of the vibrating string by simple ratios of integers, that simple ratios of integers must be pretty special things. The Pythagorean theorem caused them real problems: if the two sides of a right triangle have length one, then the diagonal has length the square root of 2. It is said that the Pythagorean troublemaker who proved that the square root of two was not writable as a ratio of integers met an unfortunate accident in a boat. This Pythagorean bias against irrational numbers is still with us: who would prefer to be called irrational?

``pythag'' 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 latter are now available on the Web, and the text will soon be available from Cambridge University Press. ``pythag'' is based partially on previous computer labs, developed by Peter Lepage, Persis Drell, Mohammad Rezai, Bill Dimm, and probably several others at Cornell, partially on the SSS module "born", partly on a 218 problem set ``Leapfrog'', and partly due to Joe Rogers (but problems are of course my fault). This program and all the documentation are copyrighted, copyright September 1996.

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