Modeling The Physical World
A computer model represents characteristics of some physical phenomenon, and attempts to reproduce or approximate their behavior and/or outputs in response to inputs
- Trivial example -- the command button in VB6 is intended to look like a metallic button, with shadows and reflection; it appears to depress when clicked
- Complex example -- Boeing’s 777 was designed on-line, using sophisticated techniques from computational fluid dynamics, for example, to design the “optimal wing”
The examples have dramatically different purposes