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What Computational Physics Is Really About

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C C Offline
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/what-comput...lly-about/

EXCERPT: [...] If we agree on the fundamental ideas of science, then we can have a discussion on the role of computational science. Let me give the following (very brief) overview of science:

Science is all about models. We look at something in real life and try to make a model of it. We can use this model to predict future (or new) events in real life. If the model doesn’t agree with real data, we change the model. Repeat forever. [...] Here are some examples of scientific models:

A lump of clay in the shape of an amoeba.

A chart showing the transfers of energy as a block slides along a table.

The idea that forces change the velocity of objects.

The equation for the gravitational force between two objects.

A differential equation describing the motion of a mass on a spring.

Oh, and a computer program that calculates the motion of a baseball with air resistance, this is a model too.

So, a model can be many different things. It doesn’t have to be a mathematical model—but that’s often what we see in science. Hopefully these are all the things we already agree on.

One final note on the nature of science. The process of making a model would be theoretical physics. Comparing a model to real world stuff would be experimental physics. A scientist can do both theoretical and experimental physics—but for big projects (like High Energy Physics) humans tend to focus on either model building or model testing.

Now let’s have a pretend meeting. We are going to meet a physics professor that specializes in creating computational models of different things (it really could be for anything). This professor will be in a “lab” that consists of lots of computers. There will probably be some pretty powerful computer clusters in that lab.

Now for a conversation with this computational physicist. Here are some key points that will be brought up....
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