MAT SCI 270
Computer Simulations of Materials
Description: Lecture, four hours; outside study, eight hours. Introduction to modern methods of computational modeling in materials science. Topics include basic statistical mechanics, classical molecular dynamics, and Monte Carlo methods, with emphasis on understanding basic physical ideas and learning to design, run, and analyze computer simulations of materials. Use of examples from current literature to show how these methods can be used to study interesting phenomena in materials science. Hands-on computer experiments. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - I thought this class would be a lot of learning how to set up simulations for different problems on your own. This is only true for some assignments, and almost all of those are kind of pointless problems anyway that don't really give you any deeper meaning of material simulations. The rest are just going to a website with a preset simulator, messing around with the parameters, and writing a report of what you see. The report is really just there to pad the length of an otherwise minimal assignment. The prof also couldn't figure out bruinlearn until the last couple weeks of the course, so there was essentially no feedback on any assignments, which sucked considering the average scores were lower than you would expect. The lectures mostly consist of a few tips about the homework followed by an endless monologue of theory that only slightly connects with the assignments. This whole class felt like 2 separate parts that never really came together at all. Overall, only weekly homework and a final group project, but the homeworks are a bit more work than they seem to be at first glance. Dry lectures but they are actually a bit interesting depending on which day you come in for. Most people seem to take this class as an easy side requirement, which I guess it's not the worst choice for.
Spring 2022 - I thought this class would be a lot of learning how to set up simulations for different problems on your own. This is only true for some assignments, and almost all of those are kind of pointless problems anyway that don't really give you any deeper meaning of material simulations. The rest are just going to a website with a preset simulator, messing around with the parameters, and writing a report of what you see. The report is really just there to pad the length of an otherwise minimal assignment. The prof also couldn't figure out bruinlearn until the last couple weeks of the course, so there was essentially no feedback on any assignments, which sucked considering the average scores were lower than you would expect. The lectures mostly consist of a few tips about the homework followed by an endless monologue of theory that only slightly connects with the assignments. This whole class felt like 2 separate parts that never really came together at all. Overall, only weekly homework and a final group project, but the homeworks are a bit more work than they seem to be at first glance. Dry lectures but they are actually a bit interesting depending on which day you come in for. Most people seem to take this class as an easy side requirement, which I guess it's not the worst choice for.
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