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Computational physics
Numerical analysis · Simulation

Data analysis · Visualization

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A computer simulation, a computer model or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system. Computational physics is the study and implementation of numerical Algorithms in order to solve problems in Physics for which a quantitative theory already exists Numerical analysis is the study of Algorithms for the problems of continuous mathematics (as distinguished from Discrete mathematics) Data analysis is the process of looking at and summarizing Data with the intent to extract useful Information and develop conclusions See also Visualization and Information graphics Visualization is any technique for creating Images Diagrams or Computer programs (also software programs, or just programs) are instructions for a Computer. Simulation is the imitation of some real thing state of affairs or process Scientific modelling is the process of generating abstract, conceptual, Graphical and or mathematical models. Computer simulations have become a useful part of mathematical modelling of many natural systems in physics (computational physics), chemistry and biology, human systems in economics, psychology, and social science and in the process of engineering new technology, to gain insight into the operation of those systems, or to observe their behavior. Note The term model has a different meaning in Model theory, a branch of Mathematical logic. Physics (Greek Physis - φύσις in everyday terms is the Science of Matter and its motion. Computational physics is the study and implementation of numerical Algorithms in order to solve problems in Physics for which a quantitative theory already exists Chemistry (from Egyptian kēme (chem meaning "earth") is the Science concerned with the composition structure and properties Foundations of modern biology There are five unifying principles Economics is the social science that studies the production distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Psychology (from Greek grc ψῡχή psȳkhē, "breath life soul" and grc -λογία -logia) is an Academic and The social sciences comprise academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups and individuals including Anthropology, Communication studies Engineering is the Discipline and Profession of applying technical and scientific Knowledge and Technology is a broad concept that deals with a Species ' usage and knowledge of Tools and Crafts and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt [1]

Computer simulations vary from computer programs that run a few minutes, to network-based groups of computers running for hours, to ongoing simulations that run for days. The scale of events being simulated by computer simulations has far exceeded anything possible (or perhaps even imaginable) using the traditional paper-and-pencil mathematical modeling: over 10 years ago, a desert-battle simulation, of one force invading another, involved the modeling of 66,239 tanks, trucks and other vehicles on simulated terrain around Kuwait, using multiple supercomputers in the DoD High Performance Computer Modernization Program; [2] a 1-billion-atom model of material deformation (2002); a 2. Note The term model has a different meaning in Model theory, a branch of Mathematical logic. The State of Kuwait ( دولة الكويت IPA [dawlatt̪ alkuwajt̪]) is a sovereign Arab Emirate on the coast of the Persian Gulf, enclosed The United States Department of Defense ( DOD or DoD) is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government 64-million-atom model of the complex maker of protein in all organisms, a ribosome, in 2005;[3] and the Blue Brain project at EPFL (Switzerland), began in May 2005, to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level. Ribosomes ( from ribo nucleic acid and "Greek soma ( meaning body") are complexes of RNA and Protein that Blue Brain is a project begun in May 2005 to create a Computer simulation of the brain of mammals including the human Brain, down to the molecular level [4]

Contents

Simulation versus modelling

Traditionally, the formal modelling, or modeling, of systems has been via a mathematical model, which attempts to find analytical solutions to problems which enables the prediction of the behaviour of the system from a set of parameters and initial conditions. Note The term model has a different meaning in Model theory, a branch of Mathematical logic.

While computer simulations might use some algorithms from purely mathematical models, computers can combine simulations with reality of actual events, such as generating input responses, to simulate test subjects who are no longer present. Whereas the missing test subjects are being modeled/simulated, the system they use could be the actual equipment, revealing performance limits or defects in long-term use by the simulated users.

Note that the term computer simulation is broader than computer modelling, which implies that all aspects are being modelled in the computer representation. However, computer simulation also includes generating inputs from simulated users to run actual computer software or equipment, with only part of the system being modelled: an example would be flight simulators which can run machines as well as actual flight software. A flight simulator is a system that tries to copy or simulate, the experience of flying an aircraft

Computer simulations are used in many fields, including science, technology, entertainment, and business planning and scheduling. Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning " Knowledge " or "knowing" is the effort to discover, and increase human understanding Technology is a broad concept that deals with a Species ' usage and knowledge of Tools and Crafts and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt See also Entertainment (disambiguation and The Entertainer (disambiguation Entertainment is an activity designed to give people A business (also called firm or an enterprise) is a legally recognized organizational entity designed to provide goods and/or services to

History

Computer simulation was developed hand-in-hand with the rapid growth of the computer, following its first large-scale deployment during the Manhattan Project in World War II to model the process of nuclear detonation. The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first Nuclear weapon (atomic bomb World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. It was a simulation of 12 hard spheres using a Monte Carlo algorithm. Hard spheres are widely used as model particles in the statistical mechanical theory of fluids and solids Monte Carlo methods are a class of Computational Algorithms that rely on repeated Random sampling to compute their results Computer simulation is often used as an adjunct to, or substitution for, modeling systems for which simple closed form analytic solutions are not possible. There are many different types of computer simulation; the common feature they all share is the attempt to generate a sample of representative scenarios for a model in which a complete enumeration of all possible states of the model would be prohibitive or impossible. Computer models were initially used as a supplement for other arguments, but their use later became rather widespread.

Data preparation

The data input/output for the simulation can be either through formatted textfiles or a pre- and postprocessor. A text file (sometimes spelled "textfile" is a kind of Computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines. In Computer aided engineering (CAE a preprocessor is a program which provides a Graphical user interface (GUI to define physical properties

Types

Computer models can be classified according to several criteria including:

For example:

CGI computer simulation

Formerly, the output data from a computer simulation was sometimes presented in a table, or a matrix, showing how data was affected by numerous changes in the simulation parameters. The use of the matrix format was related to traditional use of the matrix concept in mathematical models; however, psychologists and others noted that humans could quickly perceive trends by looking at graphs or even moving-images or motion-pictures generated from the data, as displayed by computer-generated-imagery (CGI) animation. Note The term model has a different meaning in Model theory, a branch of Mathematical logic. Computer animation Computer-generated imagery (also known as CGI) is the application of the field of Computer graphics or more specifically 3D computer graphics Although observers couldn't necessarily read out numbers, or spout math formulas, from observing a moving weather chart, they might be able to predict events (and "see that rain was headed their way"), much faster than scanning tables of rain-cloud coordinates. In Mathematics and its applications a coordinate system is a system for assigning an n - Tuple of Numbers or scalars to each point Such intense graphical displays, which transcended the world of numbers and formulae, sometimes also led to output that lacked a coordinate grid or omitted timestamps, as if straying too far from numeric data displays. Today, weather forecasting models tend to balance the view of moving rain/snow clouds against a map that uses numeric coordinates and numeric timestamps of events. Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location

Similarly, CGI computer simulations of CAT scans can simulate how a tumor might shrink or change, during an extended period of medical treatment, presenting the passage of time as a spinning view of the visible human head, as the tumor changes. Computed tomography (CT is a Medical imaging method employing Tomography. A brain tumor is any intracranial Tumor created by abnormal and uncontrolled cell division, normally either in the Brain itself ( Neurons

Other applications of CGI computer simulations are being developed to graphically display large amounts of data, in motion, as changes occur during a simulation run.

Computer simulation in science

Generic examples of types of computer simulations in science, which are derived from an underlying mathematical description:

Specific examples of computer simulations follow:

Notable, and sometimes controversial, computer simulations used in science include: Donella Meadows' World3 used in the Limits to Growth, James Lovelock's Daisyworld and Thomas Ray's Tierra. Donella "Dana" Meadows ( March 13, 1941 Elgin Illinois, USA - February 20, 2001, New Hampshire) was a pioneering The World3 model was a Computer simulation of interactions between population industrial growth food production and limits in the Ecosystems of the Earth Limits to Growth is a 1972 book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing World population and finite resource supplies commissioned by the Dr James Ephraim Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS (born 26 July 1919) is an independent scientist author researcher environmentalist and Daisyworld, a Computer simulation, is a hypothetical world Orbiting a Sun whose Temperature is slowly increasing in the simulation Tierra is a Computer simulation developed by Ecologist Thomas S

Simulation environments for physics and engineering

Graphical environments to design simulations have been developed. Special care was taken to handle events (situations in which the simulation equations are not valid and have to be changed). The open project Open Source Physics was started to develop reusable libraries for simulations in Java, together with Easy Java Simulations, a complete graphical environment that generates code based on these libraries. Open Source Physics, or OSP is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Davidson College, whose mission is to spread the use of open source code Open Source Physics, or OSP is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Davidson College, whose mission is to spread the use of open source code

Computer simulation in practical contexts

Computer simulations are used in a wide variety of practical contexts, such as:

The reliability and the trust people put in computer simulations depends on the validity of the simulation model, therefore verification and validation are of crucial importance in the development of computer simulations. The term validity (also called logical truth, analytic truth, or necessary truth) as it occurs in Logic refers generally to a property of Scientific modelling is the process of generating abstract, conceptual, Graphical and or mathematical models. Another important aspect of computer simulations is that of reproducibility of the results, meaning that a simulation model should not provide a different answer for each execution. Although this might seem obvious, this is a special point of attention in stochastic simulations, where random numbers should actually be semi-random numbers. An exception to reproducibility are human in the loop simulations such as flight simulations and computer games. A personal computer Game (also known as a computer game or simply PC game) is a Video game played on a Personal computer, rather Here a human is part of the simulation and thus influences the outcome in a way that is hard if not impossible to reproduce exactly.

Computer graphics can be used to display the results of a computer simulation. Computer graphics are Graphics created by Computers and more generally the Representation and Manipulation of Pictorial Data Animations can be used to experience a simulation in real-time e. The bouncing ball animation (below consists of these 6 frames g. in training simulations. In some cases animations may also be useful in faster than real-time or even slower than real-time modes. For example, faster than real-time animations can be useful in visualizing the buildup of queues in the simulation of humans evacuating a building. Furthermore, simulation results are often aggregated into static images using various ways of scientific visualization. See also Visualization and Information graphics Visualization is any technique for creating Images Diagrams or

In debugging, simulating a program execution under test (rather than executing natively) can detect far more errors than the hardware itself can detect and, at the same time, log useful debugging information such as instruction trace, memory alterations and instruction counts. This technique can also detect buffer overflow and similar "hard to detect" errors as well as produce performance information and tuning data. In Computer security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomalous condition where a process attempts to

Pitfalls

Although sometimes ignored in computer simulations, it is very important to perform sensitivity analysis to ensure that the accuracy of the results are properly understood. Sensitivity analysis (SA is the study of how the variation (uncertainty in the output of a Mathematical model can be apportioned qualitatively or quantitatively to different For example, the probabilistic risk analysis of factors determining the success of an oilfield exploration program involves combining samples from a variety of statistical distributions using the Monte Carlo method. Monte Carlo methods are a class of Computational Algorithms that rely on repeated Random sampling to compute their results If, for instance, one of the key parameters (i. e. the net ratio of oil-bearing strata) is known to only one significant figure, then the result of the simulation might not be more precise than one significant figure, although it might (misleadingly) be presented as having four significant figures.

See also

External links

Organizations

Education

Examples

References

  1. ^ Strogatz, Steven (2007), “The End of Insight”, in Brockman, John, What is your dangerous idea?, HarperCollins 
  2. ^ "RESEARCHERS STAGE LARGEST MILITARY SIMULATION EVER" (news), Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cal Tech, December 1997, webpage: JPL. ACT-R (pronounced act-ARE: Adaptive Control of Thought--Rational is a Cognitive architecture mainly developed by John Robert Anderson at Carnegie Articulatory synthesis refers to computational techniques for synthesizing speech based on models of the human Vocal tract and the articulation processes occurring Artificial life (commonly Alife or alife) is a field of study and an associated art form which examine Systems related to Life, its processes A Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (better known by the Recursive acronym CAVE) is an Immersive Virtual reality environment where projectors Computer Simulation is a prominent method in organizational studies and strategic management (Harrison Lin Carroll & Carley 2007 A dry lab is a laboratory where computational or applied mathematical analyses are done on a computer generated model to simulate a phenomenon in the physical realm whether it be a molecule The Earth Simulator ( ES) was the fastest Supercomputer in the world from 2002 to 2004 An emulator duplicates (provides an emulation of the functions of one System using a different system so that the second system behaves like (and appears to In Silico is the second full-length studio album by Australian Drum and bass band Pendulum, released in Australia and See Computer simulation Open Source ASCEND (open source NLA/DAE modelling environment Computational Infrastructure for Operations Note The term model has a different meaning in Model theory, a branch of Mathematical logic. Molecular dynamics ( MD) is a form of Computer simulation in which atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a period of time by approximations of The Simcyp population-based ADME simulator is a modelling and simulation platform used by the pharmaceutical industry in drug discovery and development Simulated reality is the proposition that Reality could be simulated—perhaps by Computer simulation —to a degree indistinguishable from "true" Reality Social simulation is the modeling or Simulation, normally performed using a computer, of social phenomena (e The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private, Coeducational research university located in Pasadena
  3. ^ "Largest computational biology simulation mimics life's most essential nanomachine" (news), News Release, Nancy Ambrosiano, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, October 2005, webpage: LANL-Fuse-story7428. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a
  4. ^ "Mission to build a simulated brain begins" (news), project of Institute at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, NewScientist, June 2005, webpage: NewSci7470.

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