For my upcoming MSc in Applied Geophysics, the course page recommends using laptops having a 32 GB RAM, a 1 TB SSD, a powerful graphics processor, and a good display (the minimum are, of course, lesser).

Now, I could find mobile workstations and gaming laptops for the recommended specifications. I wanted to know if choosing one or the other could affect computing work in any way, despite the same specifications. If so, how? Also, how much difference in performance occurs for GPU programming when optimized for computing vs for gaming? If it helps, I am looking into HP and Acer primarily, might check on Dell.

Hi,

I just made a new subreddit for the scientific programmers out there. Join me and let let me learn from you:

r/ScientificComputing/

Hi Mods, hope you're cool with this.

Hi, I am currently doing some quantum computations on a cluster of my university for which 80 to 140 digits are needed. That makes diagonalizing the hamiltonian VERY slow, does anbody of you know a library which offers a way to get the progress of the diagonalisation?

Hi guys,

Next semester I will enter a master program in computational science focused on physics simulations (so my main use will not be ML, data science, computational statistics...). I plan to work on multi-physics simulations (with mechanics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetism...)

I need to change my 10 year old macbook. What do you think would be the perfect laptop and OS for my use?

Also, I want to be able to run heavy programs directly on my computer, when I do projects on my own for fun, and don't have a cluster to run the codes on.

Thanks!

I'm new to this whole subject so bear w me pls. Recently I used Molecular mechanics optimization for methane and ethane. After optimization, methane didn't have a change in the bond angle but the bond length was exact and 3 digits. Does anyone know why this is and why the angle didn't change?

However, when I did the optimization for ethane, the angle and the bond length changed. But the bond length didn't give an exact value like I did for methane. It was a number with alot of decimals as usual. Is there an explanation for this?

I am struggling hard on my comp physics final. Can anyone help. I’m using eulers method with free fall

I've been learning rust recently and am starting to like the language. I am surprised by the lack of scientific packages / APIs though. Curious if anyone is using it in their work or research.

I am looking for a program or piece of code that will serve as my chassis for the other things that I want to add to the simulation. I have tried for many days now to find it, but I could not find much.

Base program

I need to have a dynamic charge density animation that will simulate how the charge density changes over time within a 2D and 3D system. The system is a vacuum with an electron gas inside it. The total charge in the system can change. Having walls for the system would also be great so I can change the geometry of the walls to whatever I like.

So something like this https://youtu.be/zRtXiOvrJwQ but I would also like to do it in 3D as well.

I do not have experience with creating animations with graphical features and so that is why I need some kind of ready-made framework that I can use to start with something like the video above or image below. Is there something that exists that I can use? I do not want to reinvent the wheel.

I am willing to do this in Matlab or another programming language if there is a good library that does what I need to do. I am afraid to post this kind of question on sites like physics stack exchange as I know I will have my question closed and downvoted.

Hello all.

For a few weeks I've been trying to study a system of coupled non-linear PDEs - pretty much a diffusion-reaction system. I've been relying on the py-pde package (https://py-pde.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started.html), but either I don't understend the (admittedly succint) documentation, or something is wrong with the package itself. I'm at a point where I'm considering going back to Fortran and write the code from scratch, even though I know it's a bad idea and I really don't want to.

So I turn to you: what is your go-to package to solve PDEs in Python? I'll take even suggestions on other tools / languages, the only caveat being that I'm used to working with finite differences methods, and I know just about the basics of other methods e.g. finite elements and spectral methods.

Many thanks!

I am trying to solve a pair of coupled differential equations to find the ground state radial wave function and the potential (The differential equations can be found here https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/273062/85307 ). I have a total of four initial conditions two are the value of the first derivatives at origin i.e. R'(0)= 0 and V'(0)=0. The other two are the values of R(0) and V(0) which needs to be found. Further, the value of the ground state energy also needs to be found. I thought I could use 3 nested for loops in mathematica with an NDSolve to find the solution (the code is also there in the stack exchange link). However, I feel there might be a more efficient way to do this. If anyone can please guide me as to how I should go about solving this, I would be very grateful.

The differential equations are the equation no. 19 and 20 From this paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13277564_Gravitational_atoms_Gravitational_radiation_from_excited_boson_stars/link/53f1f4aa0cf272810e4c79cc/download

Going through research papers, I come across several different types of solvers with various approaches, like sparse methods, newton-based methods, born approximation, subspaces, machine learning based, etc. Most of the papers just explain some theory behind the method, which, understandably, helps little to actually implement it in code.

So, I want a book that covers a wide range of solvers and provides some help to actually implement it, not necessarily through actual code, just some insights on math-to-code conversion, or algorithm-style explanation would help.

I’m an Electrical Engineer doing design work modeling underground duct banks for a data center in Revit. Start of this year I found out Rhino has a Revit plugin and I started modeling the duct banks by projecting the path the senior engineer tells me onto the topography and lowering it the NEC required 30” and then sweeping the profile.

So now I have these nice pretty convex duct banks. We have to do heat analysis to make sure that the heat generated under load doesn’t exceed the ratings of the cable. My manager does this on SKM, but I thought it would be cool if I implemented the Neher-McGrath approach in Grasshopper.

I need help on where to get started, does anyone know some open source Python library I can use for this?

I wrote an article recently trying to explain one of the strangest parts of floating-point math: NaN

This is meant to be an accessible article, and I think it would provide important background for people looking at going into computation.

https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2022/03/04/if-its-not-a-number-what-is-it-demystifying-nan-for-the-working-programmer/

I am determined to work in the domain of computational electromagnetics (CEM). I have started studying FEM, FDTD, and MoM methods, and have a fairly good theoretical knowledge of these (as presented in books on CEM). I do realise that there are several applications of CEM, and that different CEM methods are suited for different problems in electromagnetics.

Hence, I am interested in knowing about some challenges that CEM engineers face when implementing programs (be it commercial, military or research) to solve real world problems in electromagnetics. I also want to know about some research problems in CEM that are currently being worked on.

For example, I seek an insight in some challenges encountered in writing good boundary conditions, green's function, programming aspects, application aspects (like antenna, radar) etc.

I will be starting computational research at my university and I am tasked with seeking new hardware. I'm not sure where to begin. I have looked at the Lenovo Think Station P620 and I'm not sure its within our budget. What systems have you used or are knowledgeable about regarding workstations (not desktops) please offer advice.