PHYS 441 / PCSE 541: Modeling and Simulation

Course materials for PHYS 441 and PCSE 541 at Christopher Newport University, Fall 2026.

Start here

1. Follow the development-environment setup.
2. Create the course environment from environment.yml. If you already have a Python 3.12 environment that you want to use, the pip-based scripts/install_environment.py is an alternative.
3. Run python scripts/verify_environment.py with that environment active. The pip-based installer runs this verification automatically.
4. Begin with the notebooks in JupyterNotebooks/Week1.

Repository map

• Documents/: current syllabi and student-facing course documents
• Assignments/: assignment handouts and the final-project rubric
• JupyterNotebooks/Week*: the current sequence of course notebooks
• JupyterNotebooks/: additional examples and reference material
• environment.yml: the shared Python environment for current course notebooks

The repository also contains older examples and third-party reference material. Unless an assignment says otherwise, use the numbered Week* directories as the current course sequence.

Two third-party reference collections are stored as Git submodules and are not needed for the standard Week 1–14 notebooks. If an assignment asks you to use them, download them from the repository root with:

git submodule update --init

Keeping your copy current

If you cloned this repository directly, update it from the repository root with:

git pull --ff-only
conda env update --file environment.yml --prune

Activate the environment again after updating:

conda activate phys441

Do not put passwords, access tokens, API keys, or other credentials in notebook cells, Git remote URLs, or committed files.