Introducing Computations in Advanced Physics 1

All United States Military Academy graduates are required to complete an introductory mechanics course. Yearly, about 200 cadets are placed in an advanced course intended for students pursuing STEM degrees. To better prepare students for follow on courses, computational assignments using Python were recently introduced. These assignments were designed to promote critical thinking, scientific reasoning, and enhance problem solving skills in time-dependent problems where computational skills are vital. Assignments were presented as structured JupyterLab notebooks with intentionally omitted lines of code for the students to fill. Chosen omitted lines focused students’ attention on physics equations, basic commands, and plotting rather than complex coding and loops. Codes were designed to be self-correcting by printing correct intermediate values and plots. Each assignment concluded with a set of questions concerning physics assumptions and coding fundamentals. Coding based learning objectives were to avoid hard-coding, choosing appropriate timesteps, introducing numerical methods, and plotting while reinforcing the physics learning objectives of the course. We intend to present our techniques and lessons learned from introducing these computational coding assignments in our advanced introductory mechanics course.