You give solid examples. It appears that physics and chemistry have been the forerunners. Leading students to expand their thought processes will hopefully identify applications that we might not think of. I saw an interesting example of simulation in hurricanes on Annenberg Learner that exemplifies your points too.
In school, we recycled cardboard boxes to create different farm models to examine different types of farming practices and irrigation techniques. It simulated water retention and best farming practices on slopes. The simulation was a one time use though because once the models got wet we had to throw them out. This computer modelling and computational Science is far more complex than anything we had in high school.
I could definitely see computational science being used in teaching weather patterns. This type of science would allow students to better understand jet streams, hurricane patterns, or even high and low tides. Students would be able to calculate different scenarios based upon the time of year and see how the results would come out.
Me too. Especially living in Florida!
Perfect. We have an invasive species here in Florida. Pythons are taking over the Everglades.
This reminds me of SimCity. Which came out after I left High School.
In school, specifically ecology computer modeling is done to measure population growth and population density. In class, computer modeling could be used to measure rates of reaction and product formation.
Living in south Florida, the problem of invasive species is prevalent. Teaching students the main cause of them is pet imports we could possibly reduce that type of behaviors.
‘Back in my day’ we learned from lecture and reading … computer programming was just being introduced and I was not receptive to it then! Computational science will allow students of different learning abilities to better comprehend a real world problem and possible resolution.
In South Florida, one study model could be the impact of urbanization on Everglades wildlife.
That is another terrific model possibility!
I agree, this year a few of my students took interest in hockey. It was hard for us to get our students to a game/field trip due to testing blackout dates. They were introduced to an online program known as Hockey Scholars. The program leveraged highly interactive gameplay and the sport of hockey to teach students to important Science, Technology Engineering and Math concepts. The course utilized an exploratory learning approach, exposing students to foundational STEM concepts, scientific thinking and data/graphical analysis through real-life STEM applications.
Both the science I learned in school and computational science use the scientific method. They are different in that computational science uses more math. An example of an experiment I might conduct in computational science that may not be possible in a traditional science lab is how the Earth would be affected when the sun expands at the end of its life.
Those ideas go along great with my curriculum and show students how the different Earth systems interact with one another to create phenomena.
The changes on the ozone layer over time.
what is similar between science experiences I had in school and computational science is that both aim to solve problems. What is different is that computational science use is given and known data to generate hypothetical data on grand scale both temporally and spatially.
Living in Arizona and our extreme dry heat the first application I thought of was ways to predict the spread and effect of wildfires.
Computational science is a great way for students to gain a hands-on experience with something that in the past would have been taught from a book or a video. I think that teaching how viruses spread would be a great opportunity to use computational science.
Computational science is a totally new ballgame for kids to do. You can actually change parameters of a bunch of different variables and see what sort of outcomes will occur. Maybe you could model how a hurricane will impact an area, depending on different water temperatures, different fronts, and how people (especially traffic patterns) will react. In terms of what is the same, you can create a hypothesis and test that hypothesis.
I could see computer science being really useful to testing students’ hypotheses that relate to global issues, complex systems, or are too dangerous or would take too much time or money in real life. It allows us to project our ideas and receive more accurate feedback than we could before. It allows for complex problem solving in response to the information we might receive from simulation.
Computational Science differs from the science I was taught in school because is utilizes technology more. I learned science the traditional way via lectures. Computational science uses computers to model scenarios challenging to observe in nature. I think using computational science to stimulate earthquakes and the effects on nearby ecosystems would be beneficial.