  Computation holds great potential for introducing new opportunities for
creativity and exploration into the physics curriculum. At the University of
Oslo we have begun development of a new class of assignment called
computational essays to help facilitate creative, open-ended computational
physics projects. Computational essays are a type of essay or narrative that
combine text and code to express an idea or make an argument, usually written
in computational notebooks. During a pilot implementation of computational
essays in an introductory electricity and magnetism course, students reported
that computational essays facilitated creative investigation at a variety of
levels within their physics course. They also reported finding this creativity
as being both challenging and motivating. Based on these reflections, we argue
that computational essays are a useful tool for leveraging the creative
affordances of programming in physics education.
