P14: Posters * Celestijnenlaan 200C * June 6, 2002, 10:30-11.10 and 15:30-16:30

Computer Science Background for Students of Physical Enginering

M. Sinor, L. Drska, FNSPE CTU
Prague, Czech Republic

sinor@antu.fjfi.cvut.cz

Profound knowledge of computer science background is important part of training of physical scientists and engineers. At the Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, students can obtain basic understanding of the scientific computing, computer algebra and numerical analysis in three semester course starting in the first year of their study. Students get practical skill with computer algebra systems Maple and Mathematica, scientific and technical software packages Matlab, Scilab and many other important scientific tools like for example visualization framework Open Visualization Data Explorer. These tools are used comprehensively for learning problem analysis, formulation of solution, result processing and their interpretation for practical scientific and technical problems. By solving such tasks students get familiarize oneself with basic numerical algorithms for e.g. matrix computations, finite differences, and differential equations. Students are able to solve individually many practical problems and they are well prepared for more sophisticated undergraduate courses in physics and scientific computing they will be going through in the next years of their study.