Python in Physics Education

For some courses I teach, students perform numerical simulations of physical phenomena. Currently, such simulations are done in Mathematica, but previously, they were performed in the VPython environment.

This environment offers several advantages:

  1. It uses the Python programming language, an interpreted language that is relatively easy to get started with, even for novice programmers,
  2. It includes an easy-to-use integrated development environment, and
  3. It includes the "Visual" module that offers real-time 2D and 3D output with very little effort and reasonable performance.

Examples

I used to have some examples here, but they don't work anymore. They worked in 2007, but as of 2015, they don't work with the current Visual module. I recommend consulting the examples provided with Vpython.

Related Links

The VPython project Home Page.

The Python project Home Page.

This page is only occasionally maintained by Andy Dougherty