& LIGHT-YEARS! - TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

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Turn On Your Computer and Throw Open a Window onto the Wonders of Science 88 COMPUTE! impact JL nA\/m n thoi DAVID D.THORNBURG The popular cartoon image of science depicts bespectacled men in white lab coats standing around a blackboard filled with equations and carries a caption like Here's the problem: It's x before y except after z. The reality of science is quite differ ent. During my ten years as a scientist, many of my colleagues were women, most of us didn't wear glasses, and we rarely stood in front of blackboards—we sat in front of computers. It's hard to imagine what scientific re search would be like if the computer had never been invented. Computers are used in all aspects of scientific research, from the acquisition of data to the development of abstract theories. Any experimental scientist will tell you that the most tedious part of the job is col lecting data. Typically, one measures a vari ety of parameters (resistance or blood pressure, for example) under varying condi tions (different voltage or sound levels, for instance) and then generates tables or graphs that depict the relationship (if any) between the stimulus and the response. It's not un common for a single experiment to generate thousands of data points. When data is taken by hand, the oppor tunity for writing numbers incorrectly is al ways present. And even if the numbers are recorded properly, that data usually goes into a computer program for analysis: more chances for error. Only by using a computer to capture data over long periods of time can errors be decreased. Inexpensive products for the personal computer, like Broderbund's Science Tool kit and Sunburst Communications' Explor ing Science, allow home computer users to conduct scientific experiments using auto mated data acquisition. Today's high school students, armed with personal computers, are exploring sci entific ideas that were beyond the reach of the best nineteenth-century scientists. Much of the excitement in scientific circles today revolves around exotic subjects like chaos— a branch of science with simple principles, but whose results remained obscure prior to the spread of computers. But now many of these fascinating theories can be explored outside the laboratory—by individuals using their personal computers. Historically, physicists and other scien tists developed theories laden with simpli fying assumptions in order to make the resulting equations simpler to compute by hand. The result was a collection of theories filled with various "fudge" factors designed to compensate for these simplifying assump tions. Scientists could often adjust these fac tors to allow a theory to fit any set of data that was handy—hardly the basis for a rigor ous proof. Now that computers allow scien tists to deal with the complexity and nonlinearity of the real world, theories of greater accuracy can be proposed and tested. Besides theoretical explorations, anoth er application for computers in the sciences, and one with a tremendous future, is simu lation. Computers allow us to construct microworlds based on certain assumptions. By monitoring the behavior of these microworlds over time, we can see what the long-term consequences of these assump tions might be. For example, simulations that show collisions of two galaxies over millions of years can be presented, in ani mated form, on a display screen in a few minutes. The popularity of simulation pro grams (often offered as games) reflects some of the power that can come from these microworlds. In any software store, one can find simulations of nuclear reactors, war, and aircraft flight—and recently even a sim ulation of an entire city. The growth of the home video market has opened even more doors for simulation and scientific exploration. Genlock cards allow images from videodisc or videotape to be blended or overlaid with computer graphics. An animated computer model of a skeletal structure can be superimposed on a video image of a walking person, for ex ample, to show how various bones move in relation to each other. Or. a teacher might use a videodisc to illustrate cell division to a class. During the presentation, the teacher can freeze the image and then label its parts with a drawing program. The impact of computers on science is tremendous, but another aspect of scientific computing is even greater. Personal comput ers have made science accessible to people who had felt intimidated by the field's ap parent abstractions. By allowing people to "mess around" with ideas and to play with those ideas until they make sense, the per sonal computer has greatly increased people's awareness of scientific issues. The personal computer helps to make abstract theoretical ideas tangible and con crete. It demystifies science without taking away any of its wonder, informing all of us with the miracle of our world. At a time when science and technology are playing an increasing role in private life, the need for an informed public has never been greater.
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