Book Description

Ready access to computers at an institutional and personal level has defined a new era in teaching and learning. The opportunity to extend the subject matter of traditional science and engineering disciplines into the realm of scientific computing has become not only desirable, but also necessary. Thanks to port ability and low overhead and operating costs, experimentation by numerical simulation has become a viable substitute, and occasionally the only alternative, to physical experiment at ion. The new environment has motivated the writing of texts and mono graphs with a modern perspective that incorporates numerical and com puter programming aspects as an integral part of the curriculum: meth ods, concepts, and ideas should be presented in a unified fashion that motivates and underlines the urgency of the new elements, but does not compromise the rigor of the classical approach and does not oversimplify. Interfacing fundamental concepts and practical methods of scientific computing can be done on different levels. In one approach, theory and implement at ion are kept complementary and presented in a sequential fashion. In a second approach, the coupling involves deriving compu tational methods and simulation algorithms, and translating equations into computer code instructions immediately following problem formu lations. The author of this book is a proponent of the second approach and advocates its adoption as a means of enhancing learning: interject ing methods of scientific computing into the traditional discourse offers a powerful venue for developing analytical skills and obtaining physical insight.