Plasma physics PhD student Lloyd James teamed up with Dr Yasmin Andrew to run a postgraduate student project developing Python-based simulation problems rooted in the undergraduate physics curriculum. In this blog post the duo tell us more about the project.
By Dr Yasmin Andrew and Lloyd James
In 2019 we recognised that many physics students’ second year laboratory courses, final year research projects, and summer UROP projects would directly benefit from more opportunities to develop their coding skills. Students start their undergraduate physics studies with a very wide range of abilities, experiences and backgrounds in coding. Most students have no programming experience at the beginning of their first year. Python, and coding more generally, is not only an increasingly relied-upon tool in physics research, but also a hugely transferrable skill that opens up doors to other exciting fields such as tech and data science. This was the motivation behind the PyProblems project. (more…)