Goodbye, CSC Courses - For Now!

You may not know, but I'm a bit of an imposter - that is, I'm actually aiming to do a specialist in Astronomy and Physics, not a Computer Science degree of any sort.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed programming in high school, I thought that I would be saying good bye to it when I entered university. At the Open House at U of T, I asked an Astronomy grad student what jobs a physics degree could prepare me for. She claimed there were many due to the amount of math, physics, and - you guessed it - programming that you learn in your undergrad (which was both a shock and a source of excitement for me!).

So, unexpectedly, here I am, taking a Computer Science course. I wasn't sure how useful Python would be for me until I learned that a lot of physics programming is done in Python. In fact, modelling simple physical scenarios has and continues to be a central part of my Physics (PHY151) tutorials. For example, we programmed this simple simulation of a falling object, alongside an approximate graph of its position and velocity as functions of time: (My apologies for the quality - or lack thereof!)

For our own entertainment, we were also given the code for this program:

And this program (one bar swinging another bar in such a way that its own movement is affected ... or, if you see it like my brother and I do, it's a headless, red-armed jedi swinging a lightsaber):

Pretty cool, right? Of course, I don't know how to program the previous two, but I am quite excited to learn how to within my undergrad years! All of these use a special visual package in Python, which makes things much simpler to code than you may think; a lot of what we need for such simulations is already built in (phew!), such as the Sphere object.

Apparently, astronomy involves a lot of programming, especially since U of T isn't sending any students into space to do experiments. CSC148 was a recommended course for a third year astronomy course I plan to take, and CSC206 was recommended as well (but wasn't offered this year).

As this semester ends, the time nears for me to say goodbye to you and Computer Science courses, but not forever. Perhaps you want to take CSC206 as well; if so, I'll see you there next year, and if not, then all the best with your programming! :)