Nukewarm

I was recently assigned an extra credit problem in my physics class that required me to assess the forces acting on a system with varying acceleration, and use "Euler's Method", along with a computer program, to crunch out what happens to the system as time goes on (Really small dt's ).

I really enjoyed the process of transferring "immaterial" physics to a tangible medium (program) to find useful information. Is this process called something in particular? Is it a specific sub field of an engineering discipline?

Thanks,
Nukewarm

aibarr

"8" tried to break into modeling, but they told her she was too fat. "8" cried when she saw "1" in her skimpy bikini. "1" made it onto the cover of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition. ("9" moved to New York to be a model but just ended up waitressing, until she met a man named Heff, who liked her curves, and she ended up doing a completely different kind of modeling altogether.) That's the only story I know about numerical modeling.

But really, the logical academic conclusion to what you're describing will be something called "computational mechanics". You can get there via structural engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, or computational and applied mathematics... Lots of avenues into it.

There's a lot of "transferring physics to a medium to find useful information" that goes on in any field of engineering or applied science, though.

nshah9617

Yes.

Almost all engineering disciplines have computational aspects in them and some schools offer graduate degree in 'Computational Engineering'.

Look into Finite Element Analysis (FEA), Finite Difference Method (FDM), simulation software (COMSOL), computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and so forth.

Reservoir Engineering (aspect of petroleum engineering) has a ton of scripting/programming.

AuburnMathTutor

You can study numerical analysis in most mathematics departments, and scientific computing in a healthy number of CS departments. Engineering programs will usually include a fair amount of computational science, but you can also get into it through science departments (physics, chemistry, geology, biology, etc.)

Some good search terms would be:
Numerical analysis
Scientific computing
Computational science / physics / chemistry / etc.
Computational (fluid) mechanics

I really enjoy that kind of thing, too. I've done stuff with it in the Physics & CS departments at my school.

Mobiusfrost

don't materials and EE do stuff related to computer modeling?

Mobiusfrost

any one know?

AuburnMathTutor

"don't materials and EE do stuff related to computer modeling? "

- They *use* computer models, but they don't really *do* modeling... it's a subtle difference...

RacinReaver

By "use" you mean they throw stuff into pre-made packages and see what pops out? Because there are a lot of people out there in materials developing programs and algorithms to try and calculate interatomic potentials, band structures, and those sorts of things.

Mobiusfrost

if I much prefer programming over experimental work, would i like the modeling that materials and EEs do?

AuburnMathTutor

"By "use" you mean they throw stuff into pre-made packages and see what pops out? Because there are a lot of people out there in materials developing programs and algorithms to try and calculate interatomic potentials, band structures, and those sorts of things."
- Well, that, and when they do implement new models, the focus isn't the models or even the modeling, but the question you want to answer at the end. The models are a means to an end, not the real thing of it, and as such if you're interested in modeling, it may not be your cup of tea. For instance, how something like a word processor works is interesting, but I wouldn't want a job taking dictation in MS Word.

"if I much prefer programming over experimental work, would i like the modeling that materials and EEs do? "
- I sincerely doubt it. "Codes" you write for anything outside of CS (and math, to a lesser extent) are going to be messy, messy, messy. If you write it too well, people will tell you to go back and muddy it up.

Lacero

That kind of stuff sounds like Computational electromagnetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in EE.

That kind of stuff sounds like CS.

Are you more interested in the tools or the application of the tools to solve physical problems?

RacinReaver

I think AuburnMathTutor put it a good way. Are you interested in getting an answer to a question or just making a really neat model?

aibarr

Oh. Was that the question? Because we're usually looking for answers in structures, too, but the models come out neat so we show them to clients, who like pretty pictures. It's pretty much the only part of our presentation that they understand.

nshah9617

We all just use Comsol.

Mobiusfrost

"That kind of stuff sounds like CS.

Are you more interested in the tools or the application of the tools to solve physical problems? "

I'm interested in applying the programming tools to solve physical problems.