Bob1 started the day by explaining what scientific computing is. He then showed an example of computer iterations by a "reverse wave." The students all stood up except one, and then everyone looked to the right and did what his or her neighbor was doing. This created a wave of people sitting down and then standing up again with a new iteration.
Bob also showed the students some examples of cellular automata, like pixelworld and the game of life, as well as probability in cellular automata using a forest fire simulation. The results of the forest fire were put into a graph which showed an S-curve for the probabilty of burning vs. average results. Students finished the online models with wolves and rabbits, seeing the effects of rules on multiple populations. The students then used SimSurface, and Bob told them that this was very similar to the simple rules in the previous programs.
In the afternoon, Bob2 showed the students some chemistry, explaining many terms and assumptions made in computational chemistry. Then everyone built a program in perl that simulated two atoms, lithium and hydrogen. Each person put the atoms different distances apart then made a visualization of their results to see if there was a bond.
The day ended with dividing the class into groups for projects that would be presented on Friday. By the end of class, some of the groups had been formed and their topic defined. One group wanted to use STELLAâ¢, another planned to model glucose and Nutrasweetâ¢. One group wanted to model falling objects with different interacting forces like air resistance and angle of projection.