PY 355 - Methods of Theoretical Physics - Spring 2026

Python/Jupyter Assignments

All computational assignments will be assigned as Jupyter notebooks through the PY355 JupyterHub Server hosted on the central physics server. Assignment and tutorial notebooks can be found at the 'Examples' tab on the main page of your Jupyter Hub after login. Click the 'Use' button to make a fresh copy of the example notebook into your own account. See the following:

Submission: Completed Jupyter notebooks must be submitted by clicking on the 'Submit' button from the JupyterHub interface. You will receive a confirmation email at your bu.edu account that the submission was received. Make sure that all cells you want graded are visible, including their execution output as we will not reexecute the notebooks unless there is a problem.

You are welcome to set up Jupyter on your own computers and download the .ipynb assignment files locally to work on them. However, you will need to re-upload the completed .ipynb files to the physics server in order to submit them using the server interface.

For Computer Experts

All of the technical information below is optional for completing the programmatic requirements of the course. You can do all of the assignments by logging into the Jupyter Hub and accessing the examples through the server as described above.

The files shown on your Jupyter Hub account are those of your home directory on the Physics linux server. You may access the server directly using a terminal to connect via SSH to buphy.bu.edu.

Local Installation of Jupyter

In order to complete the homework without access to the internet, you will need to install Python3 and the scientific python libraries, including numpy, scipy, matplotlib and jupyter. More information for how to do this can be found on SciPy.org.