Computer Science in Science PD: Introduction to Computational Science - Discussion

You reminded me of the Santa Barbara oil spill a few weeks ago. Apparently the pipes had corroded to a fraction of their original thickness over the years. Non destructive testing (NDT) is the oil industry is particularly important.

Related to this is the work done the EPA, FEMA and other agencies charged with the clean up of environmental disasters. Modeling where oil slicks will travel into and and the impact on marine life is critical. If nothing else, insurance companies would likely be interested in modeling to calculate what they would need to charge for a policy and stay profitable.

Computational Science is more “real life” and relevant to computer science in the past. It allows for the ability to predict behaviors in nature and society without the risk to human lives and because of the ability to model and simulate it is considered credible.

Great thought. Plants, bacteria, viruses… computational models and simulations could provide valuable details/predictions that would enable scientists to develop possible preventive courses of action.

Computational Science would be great to predict growth patterns of plants, the amount of fruits that we would be able to harvest for a specific season based on tentative temperatures, moisture, pollen, etc…

For example, I am sure that the privatization of prisons, a very lucrative business, used computational Science based on student test scores.

Computational science is an integration of mathematical modeling and scientific computing methods for studying real-world science. I could be used also for computing the time process of the ozone layer.

I thought it would be interesting to use agent based modeling with cancer and the cells it effects. This could be a way of showing how cancers cells are affected by different treatments.

Computational science would be an effective way to teaching health and the spread of STD’s.

While models are studied in traditional science classes using computational models allows for a greater number of variables, increased interactions, and these factors can be manipulated and the model run very quickly.

Computational Science allows us to experiment on something we normally couldn’t do in classroom with real world applications.

I completely agree. It allows students to try experimenting with their own ideas- as outlandish as they may become without actual damage from their trials!

Any long range erosional studies over years, coastline changes ect could be better understood by students in a computer simulation where long expanses of time could be shown quickly

Great way to show long term stream erosion . In the classroom in a traditional lab you can only see what is happening at that moment . This computational science might allow us to predict long term effects.

Great thought ! you rock! i would not have thought of this, but you could see long term numbers of disease outbreaks.

Computational science would be useful in predicting changes in the physical world over a long time period. An example of this is changes in stream bed erosion, changes in ocean salinity with increased volume of fresh water due to glacial melting, and changes in atmospheric CO2 and SO2 with volcanic eruptions.

Measuring cancer cell growth is an interesting idea.

I didn’t learn computational science in school. Sadly, I don’t remember even conducting any labs until high school. At the 6th grade level, the study of population change over time and the spread of water pollution would be much more engaging with computational science.

A unit in 8th grade science I feel could be better illustrated using computational science is on Newton’s Law of Motion. It would be wonderful if my students could simulate the testing of automobilies during accidents and calculate the forces experienced by both the automobile and it’s passengers.

When I was in high school the only “computer” we had was our brain and a basic calculator. Computers in the schools didn’t start showing up until my kids were in school, so times have definitely changed. I found the video clip quite engaging due to the abilities to quickly run simulations for the “what if” scenarios that would allow for better preparedness, etc. I could use a simulation regarding the Bay and algae blooms created with nutrient pollution. It could also be used to discover how an epidemic might spread throughout a population.

As others have mentioned, there were very few ties in school between computer modeling and science when I was in school. Even though computers weren’t anything new, there was no connection between how computers could model real world applications in science. One of the things I am looking forward to is finding and learning to use programs that model science concepts that take place over long periods of geologic time such as geomorphology or biology concepts such as evolution or natural selection.