• Question: How does computer software help physics?

    Asked by Bevin to Dan on 9 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Daniel Fovargue

      Daniel Fovargue answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      Generally speaking, I’m sure physicists use different kids of software to help view data or compute important numbers from data.

      What I mean in my profile page though is that we can make computer programs to help physicists (or other scientists) understand their problem better by making a simulation of the problem.

      For example, if astrophysicists are studying star formation, we could make a computer simulation of this. Then the scientists could test different ideas in the simulation or use the simulation to see things happening that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to see.

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