Exercises

Statistical Physics and Computer Simulation for CSE

Prof. Philippe H. Hünenberger

Spring semester 2026 (FS26)

16 February – 29 May 2026 (Excl. Easter Break: 6-10 April)

Exercise Sessions

Thursdays, 12:45-13.30, HCI J7 , ETH Hönggerberg (14x1 hours), starting from the first semester week

Principle

The exercises of the course consist of two phases :

• In a first phase there will be nine formal exercises E1-E9 (sometimes involving a programming component) to be carried out individually on a weekly basis. To help you solve the series, two assistants will be available to you during a one-hour weekly session. The last exercise (E9) is a practical introduction to the C++ simulation program mdatom that will be used in the second phase of the exercises
• In a second phase you will select by groups of two (exceptionally three) one student project among twelve project options P1-P12, which you will carry out over the remaining weeks, and for which you will give a five-minutes presentation at the end of the semester (last lecture plus last exercise session). The projects consist of small extensions of the program mdatom, which you will have to implement, test, and discuss. Giving the final presentation is compulsory if you want to obtain the +0.25 points examination bonus

Computing component

The second-phase projects as well as a few of the first-phase exercises involve programming/computation components. These will be performed on the students' personal laptops (so, you have to bring them to the exercise sessions!). The default language is C++ (at least for the material we provide, i.e. code skeletons in E1-E9 and program mdatom), but you may also use other languages (e.g. jupyter or mathematica notebooks) for your analyses as you see fit.

Participation

• For the first-phase exercises (exercises E1-E9), it is highly recommended that you carry out the exercise, attend the session with the assistants, and return your solution to the main assistant. However, this is your responsibility (i.e. we won't check). If you return a solution, you may do so within at most six days of the corresponding exercise session, and you will receive feedback from the assistants within one week of your submission
• For the second-phase projects (your selected project P# amonng P1-P12), your performance will be taken into account in the final exam mark as a learning component, with a possible bonus of 0.25 points on top of the exam grade for students who have carried out the practical exercises and presented their project at the last lecture (in case of exam repetition, you can reuse the bonus from a previous semester)

Exercise Material

The material for the exercises will be available on the web site (see document page). These include:

• The scripts of the nine exercises E1-E9 in pdf format possibly accompanied by associated file sets in tar format  (posted one week before the exercise session)
• The sample solutions of the nine exercises E1-E9 in pdf format (posted one week after the exercise session)
• The documentation of the mdatom program as a pdf file (posted around mid-semester)
  
• The document describing the twelve possible student projects P1-P12 (posted around mid-semester)
• The source code of the mdatom program (posted around mid-semester)