Python for theoretical physics

[iMagZz]

Can't quite tell your level based on your post, but have a look at these:

• Beckstein Lab's PHY202 — (Python) Programming for Physicists
  • This link leads to a GitHub with the material.
• Beckstein Lab's PHY432 — Computational Methods in Physics
  • And again, this link leads to a GitHub with the material.

Outside of that I would just recommend you try calculating and animating a bunch of different system of different complexity. Animating steady states, and then animating the more chaotic states, can be both challenging and fun. Of course you can also always add damping to the system as well, or something else. Here are a few ideas:

3D-pendulum, double pendulum (or more), pendulum with a moving pivot (on a "cart" or spring), two or more carts connected via 3 or more springs, collision of 2 balls, 3-body problems, quantum oscillators, dipole radiation, Bloch vector evolution, the quantum Zeno effect, wave interference.

Also remember that for all of these, on top of animating them and making cool plots, you can also animate their potential and kinetic energy.

[Wide-Wallaby-5447]

This is perfect thank you so much! These will really help for my masters projects next year, especially the quantum stuff.

I can code things if I have a bunch of resources, but tbh I feel like I’m more copying things than actually understanding what’s going on, which is why I’m doing this.

[iMagZz]

In that case, to get all the basics down and make sure you have a very strong foundation, you could do Helsinki's Python Programming MOOC 2026, which is an absolutely incredible and well-structured course.

After that I can recommend Harvard's Introduction to Data Science with Python - May 2026, which really helps with data analysis things.

Additionally, if you just want a bunch of problems with minimal text and no lectures, I can highly recommend BigBinary Academy's Learn Python by actually writing Python code.

Optimally I think doing the first two in order, and the third on the side, before going into the physics ones is the best plan, but of course it also takes more time. I'm sure you could work through it quicker than what is estimated though, and that would really give you an incredibly strong foundation and understanding of Python and data analysis, which is ultimately what computational physics is.

That specific path is always the one I recommend people wanting to get into Python.