Thursday, July 08, 2004
After neglecting me for the past three weeks, my advisor is finally giving me some interesting problems to look at. In particular, he wants me to write up some code to solve an equation that models the dynamics of a plasma beam confined inside a device known as the Paul Trap. It is important to be able to contain and control plasma beams, according to my advisor, because high intensity plasma beams may end up replacing the high powered lasers used in current Inertial Confinement Fusion schemes.
So, I've spent the past couple of days coding almost non-stop, and wishing I had paid more attention during my CS classes. I have a working implementation of an ODE solver using the Runge-Kutta method, but my program that's supposed to do Newton's method keeps vehemently spitting nonsense at me. But all in all, I'm very relieved to finally have some work to do, and I've been in a happy, busy sort of mood.
So, I've spent the past couple of days coding almost non-stop, and wishing I had paid more attention during my CS classes. I have a working implementation of an ODE solver using the Runge-Kutta method, but my program that's supposed to do Newton's method keeps vehemently spitting nonsense at me. But all in all, I'm very relieved to finally have some work to do, and I've been in a happy, busy sort of mood.
