Huff Kathryn D. - Effective Computation in Physics

Welcome to Effective Computation in Physics. By reading this book, you willlearn the essential software skills that are needed by anyone in a physics-basedfield. From astrophysics to nuclear engineering, this book will take you from notknowing how to make a computer add two variables together to being thesoftware development guru on your team.

Physics and computation have a long history together. In many ways, computersand modern physics have co-evolved. Only cryptography can reallyclaim the same timeline with computers as physics. Yet in spite of this shared growth,physicists are not the premier software developers that you wouldexpect. Physicists tend to suffer from two deadly assumptions:

1. Software development and software engineering are easy.

2. Simply by knowing physics, someone knows how to write code.

While it is true that some skills are transferablefor example, being able to reason aboutabstract symbols is important to boththe fundamental concerns, needs, interests,and mechanisms for deriving the truth of physics and computation are often distinct.

For physicists, computers are just another tool in the toolbox.Computation plays a role in physics that is not unlike the role of mathematics.You can understand physical concepts without a computer, but knowinghow to speak the language(s) of computers makes practicing physics much easier.Furthermore, a physical computer is not unlike a slide rule or aphoton detector or an oscilloscope. It is an experimental device that canhelp inform the science at hand when set up properly. Because computers aremuch more complicated and configurable than any previous experimental device, however,they require more patience, care, and understanding to properly set up.

More and more physicists are being asked to be software developersas part of their work or research. This book aims to make growing as a softwaredeveloper as easy as possible. In the long run, this will enable you to bemore productive as a physicist.

On the other end of the spectrum, computationalmodeling and simulation have begun to play an important part in physics.When experiments are too big or expensive to perform in statistically significantnumbers, or when theoretical parameters need to be clamped down, simulation sciencefills a vital role. Simulations help tell experimenters where to look and canvalidate a theory before it ever hits a bench. Simulation is becoming a middlepath for physicists everywhere, separate from theory and experiment.Many simulation scientists like to think of themselves as being more theoretical.In truth, though, the methods that are used in simulationsare more similar to experimentalism.