The art and science of simulation

What is simulation? A simulator is a computer model of the physical world. You are probably familiar with flight simulators, which provide the sensations and interactions of flight without leaving the ground. There are also a lot of other types of simulations and simulators. We could have a medical simulator that mimics diseases or responds to treatments. It could be a financial simulation that models returns on the stock market based on trends. There are structural simulations that model the loads on bridges and buildings to see whether the materials are adequate.

The most common way of creating a simulation is by building a physics model of the item under test. For a flight simulator, this means plugging ...

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