Conceptual goal: Develop familiarity in applying statistics to classical physics.
Modeling goal: Develop an understanding of how a computational model is developed and implemented.
Computational goal: Introduction to Matlab, for loops and if statements, basic plotting.

As no prior exposure to Matlab is assumed in this course, the first week is dedicated to familiarizing the students with Matlab through tutorials. We have developed a handout that guides students in using Matlab to model a classical particle in a two-dimensional box and to track statistics for the particle (time spent on the left half vs. the right half of the box, for example). Students will understand what it means to discretize an equation, and will have to decide on an appropriate time-step and how long to run their model in order to get adequate data.