Programming with Python: And Its Applications to Physical Systems

Description

This book is an introduction to Python Programming and provides a practical approach to the subject. The basic concepts of Python are explained in detail and augmented with examples and diagrams for a thorough understanding of the subject. The book is primarily aimed at students with little or no prior knowledge of programming languages. However, self-taught and hobbyist programmers, scientists, engineers, computing professionals and computer scientists and others who need to program as part of their work may also use this book for understanding the basic concepts of Python. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Brief Contents Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgement 1. Introduction 1.1 What is a Computer? 1.2 Basics of Programming Languages 1.2.1 Machine Language 1.2.2 Assembly Language 1.2.3 High Level Languages 1.3 Interpreter and Compiler 1.4 Algorithms and Flowcharts 1.4.1 Writing Algorithms 1.4.2 Flowcharts 1.5 Writing Algorithms and Flowcharts for A Few Important Problems 1.5.1 Reversing the Digits of a Given Integer 1.5.2 To Verify Whether an Integer is a Prime Number or Not 1.5.3 To Organize a given Set of Numbers in Ascending Order 1.5.4 To Find the Square Root of an Integer 1.5.5 To Find the Factorial for a Given Number 1.5.6 To Generate the Fibonacci Series for n Terms 1.5.7 To Find the Value of the Power of a Number Raised by Another Integer 1.5.8 To Reverse the Order Elements of an Array 1.5.9 To Find the Largest Number in an Array 1.5.10 To Solve a Quadratic Equation 1.6 Why Python? 1.7 Installing Python 1.7.1 Windows 1.7.2 Linux and UNIX 1.7.3 Macintosh 1.8 Other Python Distributions 1.9 Keeping in Touch and Up-to-Date Exercises 2. Identifiers and Data Types 2.1 Keywords 2.2 Identifiers 2.2.1 Rules for Identifiers 2.3 Data Types 2.4 Values and Types 2.5 Backslash Character Constants 2.6 Variables Exercises 3. Operators and Expressions 3.1 Arithmetic Operators 3.1.1 Integer Arithmetic 3.1.2 Large Integers 3.1.3 Hexadecimals and Octals 3.1.4 Real Arithmetic 3.1.5 Mixed Mode Operations 3.1.6 Rules for Conversion 3.1.7 Explicit Conversions 3.2 Relational Operators 3.2.1 More Relational Operators 3.2.2 Is : The Identity Operator 3.3 Logical/Boolean Operators 3.4 Assignment Operators 3.5 Interactive Mode and Script Mode 3.6 Order of Operations 3.7 Comments in Python 3.8 __Future__ in Python 3.9 How to Track Errors? 3.10 Common Errors 3.10.1 Syntax Errors 3.10.2 Runtime Errors 3.10.3 Semantic Errors Exercises 4. Managing Input and Output Operations 4.1 Managing Inputs 4.1.1 raw_input() and input() functions 4.2 Managing Outputs 4.2.1 repr() or str() Functions 4.2.2 rjust() and format() Functions 4.3 Frequently used Formatting Specifiers Exercises 5. Decision Making and Branching 5.1 If Statement 5.1.1 Simple if Statement 5.1.2 if else Statement 5.1.3 Nested if else Statement 5.1.4 else if (elif) Ladder Statement 5.2 Boolean Values (True or False) Exercises 6. Decision Making and Looping 6.1 The While Loop Statement 6.2 The for Loop Statement 6.3 The range() Function 6.3.1 range (argument1) function 6.3.2 range (argument1, argument2) function 6.3.3 range (argument1, argument2, argument3) function 6.4 The xrange() Function 6.5 Jumps in Loops 6.6 Skipping a part of a Loop 6.7 The else Clauses on Loops Exercises 7. Functions 7.1 Types of Functions 7.1.1 Built in Functions 7.1.2 User Defined Functions 7.2 Incremental Development 7.3 Nesting of Functions 7.4 Boolean Function 7.5 Recursion Function 7.6 Checking Types : isinstance ( ) 7.7 Designing and Writing Modules 7.8 Global and Local Variables 7.9 Default Arguments Exercises 8. List 8.1 Definition 8.2 The in Operator 8.3 Traversing in a List 8.4 Nested List 8.5 List Operations 8.6 List Slices 8.7 List Functions 8.8 List Methods 8.9 Splitting a String into a List 8.10 Inputting List from the Console/Keyboard 8.11 Shifting Lists 8.12 Simplifying Coding with List 8.13 Copying List 8.14 Passing Lists to Functions 8.15 Searching Lists 8.15.1 The Linear Search Method 8.15.2 The Binary Search Method 8.16 Sorting Lists 8.16.1 Selection Sort 8.16.2 Insertion Sort 8.17 Two-Dimensional Lists 8.17.1 Processing Two-Dimensional Lists 8.17.2 Initializing Lists with Input Values 8.17.3 Initializing Lists with Random Values 8.17.4 Printing Two-Dimensional List 8.17.5 Summing All Elements 8.17.6 Summing Elements by Column 8.17.7 Finding the Row with the Largest Sum 8.17.8 Random Shuffling 8.17.9 Passing Two-Dimensional Lists to Functions 8.18 Application: Finding the Closest Pair 8.19 Multidimensional Lists Exercises 9. Dictionaries 9.1 Definition 9.2 Creating a Dictionary 9.3 Adding, Modifying, and Retrieving Values 9.4 The Dictionary Methods 9.5 Deleting Items 9.6 Looping Items 9.7 Equality Test 9.8 Dictionaries of Dictionaries 9.9 Sets 9.10 Accessing Sets With Common Functions 9.11 Subset and Superset in Sets 9.12 Relational operators in Sets 9.13 Set Operations Exercises 10. Tuples 10.1 Definition 10.2 Tuple Assignment 10.3 Tuples as Return Values 10.4 The Basic Tuple operations 10.5 Variable-length Argument Tuples 10.6 Relationship between Lists and Tuples 10.7 Relationships between Dictionaries and Tuples Exercises 11. Files 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Text Files and Binary Files 11.3 Absolute and Relative Filename 11.4 Opening a File 11.5 Writing Data 11.6 Some Commonly used Methods for File Handling 11.7 Writing and Reading Numeric Data Exercises 12. Computational Physics–Application in Physical Systems 12.1 Introduction 12.2 What is Computational Physics? 12.3 Oscillatory Motion 12.3.1 Ideal Simple Harmonic Oscillator 12.3.2 Motion of a Damped Oscillator 12.4 Stationary States and Time Independent SchrÖdinger Equation 12.4.1 Introduction 12.4.2 Form of Potential 12.4.3 Eigen Value Problem 12.5 Fractals 12.5.1 Fractional Dimension (Math) 12.5.2 The Sierpinski Gasket 12.5.3 Assessing Fractal Dimension 12.5.4 Beautiful Plants 12.6 Random Numbers in Computer Simulation 12.6.1 Introduction 12.6.2 Randomness: Some Intuitive Concepts 12.6.3 Random Number Generators 12.6.4 Pseudo-Random Number Generators 12.6.5 Basic Strategy 12.6.6 Mid-Square Generator 12.6.7 Multiplicative Congruential Generator 12.6.8 Mixed Multiplicative Congruential Generator 12.6.9 Tests for Randomness 12.7 Monte Carlo Method 12.7.1 Introduction 12.7.2 Multi-Dimensional Integrals: 12.7.3 Monte Carlo Method: Hitting The Bull’s Eye Blind-Folded 12.7.4 Application of the Monte Carlo Method: Finding the Value of π 12.8 Lorenz Equation Exercises Appendix I: Objective Type Questions Appendix II: Descriptive Type Questions References Index