41. Appendix: An itinerary for guest lectures

This appendix shows some examples of possible guest lectures which would show some of the material in this book. It is mostly meant to provide links

41.1. Motivation for linking computing and scholarship

41.1.1. Personal story

  • 1980 and the first personal computres

  • 1983 and the Reed College physics department requiring that we learn to program

  • 1983 and David Basin trading: he teaches me C and UNIX if I teach him to play guitar

  • 1985 and Nerdix

  • 1985 and watching Keith Packard hack

  • Realizaing that others did not get this level of computing instruction

  • 1992 and an impossible physics thesis thanks to software sophistication

41.1.2. Software freedom

The only reason I have enjoyed my career as a physicist is because of the existence of software freedom.

41.1.3. What can be done in various disciplines

Although I have not seen it represented graphically, there is a timeline

41.1.4. How a physicist-hacker looks at things

The glow worms in New Zeland.

Constellations in the random number calculation of pi.

41.2. A tour of topics

41.2.1. The history and calculation of pi

Section 9

41.2.2. Generating music

To give this presentation it is useful to first have the students install the sox utilities on their own computers.

Section 35