Simulation and Modelling

Simulation and Modelling Software

Computers can be used to give people the experience of dangerous, expensive or difficult situations allowing someone to try things out without putting themselves at risk. For example, it is both dangerous and expensive to land a person on the moon - it is not something that you can try again and again until you get it right. However, training schools for astronauts use computers to simulate the conditions that they might experience when landing a spacecraft.

Risky Situations

Sometimes people need to learn how to carry out jobs that are dangerous or expensive. Computers can be used to simulate the conditions that people could meet so that they are prepared for them.

Pilots learning to fly a large aeroplane are often trained at first on flight simulators. These machines are controlled by computers and give the trainee pilot the impression that they are sitting in the cockpit of a real aeroplane. If the trainee makes a mistake and crashes the plane then no damage is done ... and no one is hurt. The pilots can practice what to do if the engines fail; or there is fog on the runway; or other dangerous situations without putting themselves at risk.

In the same way, astronauts are trained in simulators to fly the space shuttle, police are trained to drive fast, and military personnel can simulate battle situations.

a photograph from the space shuttle - honest

Games

Touring Car Championship from Sega

Of course, if it isn't your job to fly a space shuttle then the simulation software used to train astronauts can be quite good fun to use. Flight simulator software can give people the experience of flying a wide range of different aircraft in different conditions around various cities. It's a lot cheaper and safer than flying a real plane ... and you don't need to leave your house!

This is a screen-grab of Sega's Touring Car Championship game, it gives you the impression that you are racing a powerful car against some of the top drivers in the world. You can select your car, the racing track and the conditions. It's an exciting game that allows you to drive in a way that would have you arrested if you did it for real.

Some simulation software lets you build and control whole cities: watching them develop and grow over a speeded up time scale.

Hard to Understand

Scientists and engineers use simulation software to visualise things that can't normally be seen. Chemists spend their time trying to understand how different substances react with each other. To help them understand how a substance they might behave they use computers to help them simulate the shape and arrangement of the substances that they are studying. The moving image shown here is a representation of one of the complex chemicals that make up our body (it is the enzyme in saliva that digests bread and potatoes).

As well as using simulations to see things in different ways, scientists and engineers also use computers to model certain situations. A computer model is able to help people to predict (or guess) the future. For example, scientists at the meteorological office use very powerful computers to make a small, speeded up version of our weather. They can then use their computer model to predict what the weather is going to do in a day or so. They can also use their computer model to run a simulation of the weather - so that we can see what is predicted to happen.

 a complex molecule

Here's the tricky bit

A computer simulation is able to trick us into seeing or feeling something that isn't really there: driving a virtual racing car; landing an imaginary space shuttle; etc. But to do this, the computer needs a model of the real world. A computer model is the mathematics underneath all this fancy computer graphics: it contains the rules that the space shuttle must obey. Rules like gravity, and the way light reflects from things. Without the computer model, the simulation would not look real.

Now answer these questions ...

  1. Who is most likely to use a flight simulator ?
  2. What is the main benefit of using a flight simulator ?
  3. Flight simulators also make training less ...
  4. Flight simulators can also be used for what other purpose ?
  5. Why is it useful to model the weather ?

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