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PREFACEIn the decade since two of us wrote the book Computational Physics (CP), wehave seen a good number of computational physics texts and courses come intoexistence. This is good. Multiple texts help define a still-developing field and providea choice of viewpoints and focus. After perusing the existing texts, we decidedthat the most worthwhile contribution we could make was to extend our CP textso that it surveys many of the topics we hear about at computational science conferences.Doing that, while still keeping the level of presentation appropriate forupper-division undergraduates or beginning graduate students, was a challenge.As we look at what we have assembled here, we see more than enough materialfor a full year’s course (details in Chapter 1, “Computational Science Basics”). Whenoverlapped with our new lower-division text, A First Course in Scientific Computing,and when combined with studies in applied mathematics and computer science,we hope to have created a path for undergraduate computational physics/scienceeducation to follow.The ensuing decade has also strengthened our view that the physics communityis well served by having CP as a prominent member of the broader computationalscience and engineering (CSE) community. This view affects our book in two ways.First, we present CP as a multidisciplinary field of study that contains elementsfrom applied mathematics and computer science, as well as physics. Accordingly,we do not view the pages we spend on these subjects as space wasted not studyingphysics but rather as essential components of a multidisciplinary education.Second, we try to organize and present our materials according to the steps in thescientific problem-solving paradigm that lie at the core of CSE:Problem ↔ theory ↔ model ↔ method ↔ implementation ↔ assessment.This format places the subject matter in its broader context and indicates how thesteps are applicable to a wider class of problems. Most importantly, educationalassessments and surveys have indicated that some students learn science, mathematics,and technology better when they are presented together in context ratherthan as separate subjects. (To some extent, the loss of “physics time” learning mathand CS is made up for by this more efficient learning approach.) Likewise, somestudents who may not profess interest in math or CS are motivated to learn thesesubjects by experiencing their practical value in physics problem solving.Though often elegant, we view some of the new CP texts as providing more ofthe theory behind CP than its full and practical multidisciplinary scope. While thismay be appropriate for graduate study, when we teach from our texts we advocatea learn-by-doing approach that requires students to undertake a large numberof projects in which they are encouraged to make discoveries on their own. Weattempt to convey that it is the students’ job to solve each problem professionally,−101COPYRIGHT 2008, PRINCET O N UNIVE R S I T Y P R E S SEVALUATION COPY ONLY. NOT FOR USE IN COURSES.34811_fm — 2008/2/13 — Page xxiii