Human beings are pretty intelligent creatures. We are good at thinking, but we need tools to organize and solve problems in science. We should be able to analyze the information we know, into a form that is compact and easy to interpret, and most importantly manipulated. Traditionally, Physics has been divided into two groups: theoretical physics and experimental physics. However, over the past few years, computation in experiments has emerged as the third discipline which can perhaps be placed between these two. This is where computation comes in. Computation (modelling) is especially relevant in physics, which is filled with laws and models. In a short definition, it helps to solve problems that are hard to solve analytically and to arrive at conclusions.
Let us discuss the role of computational techniques in the fundamental concepts of science. Every phenomenon in nature is a model. We can predict the future by modelling a physical phenomenon. A model can be anything that describes a real-life scenario. Some of the examples are ‘equation to find the gravitational force between two objects’, ‘wave equation of a simple harmonic oscillator’, even a computer program itself is a model. Any phenomena can be represented and analyzed using computer programs. Computer programming plays an inevitable role in science. The results produced are close to the experimental values. An advantage is that it can bridge both theory and experiment. It has enormous applications in the field of material science, nuclear physics, and simulation of astrophysics systems like black holes, solar systems and much more.
In science, we have theoretical building models and experimental testing models. So, our question is where does the computational model belong to. It is actually ‘building a model’. It is very difficult to create a numerical model that runs with a unique set of skills. C, JAVA, PYTHON, MATLAB, FORTRAN, MATHEMATICA are few of the programming languages that are used to construct computational models. We are still building and testing models. If it is not tested in the real world, then it could be a video game.
In the past, some scientists claimed that doing computational research wasn’t really doing ‘science’, they were just ‘computer programmers’. It took some time to validate these computational techniques. But now, we are in a world where every field uses computer programs in some or the other way. It would be of great help if we include computer programming (coding and decoding) in the introductory classes of Physics. So, in short, computational physics helps to solve problems that are either hard or impossible to solve analytically and to arrive at conclusions.
Divya Krishnan
Reference: Wired.com
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