Modeling and Simulation of Everyday Things

Michael W. Roth, PhD, serves as Dean of the School of STEM and Business at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo, Iowa. Prior to that he has held faculty positions at a variety of community colleges and universities in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Iowa and was most recently Chair for three years at Northern Kentucky University's Department of Physics, Geology and Engineering Technology. He has a passion for teaching and holds several awards for teaching excellence across all levels of undergraduate study, and has participated in course and program development and assessment. He has involved a large and diverse group of students in his computational physics modeling and simulation–based research program, and has published numerous articles and presented at conferences with them in the fields of condensed matter surface physics, bullet impact, groundwater flow, snow remediation, solar system formation, and planetary impact. He is a collector of antique science books and laboratory equipment.

"Mike Roth refers in his book to the dispersed pieces of information that everyone gains via internet in everyday life and completes them with professional knowledge on computer modeling, providing an introduction to the techniques of computer simulations, showing their usefulness as well as their limits. His lively narrative style makes his book accessible for everyone interested in science." — Prof Lucyna Firlej, Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, Montpellier, France"a playful and exciting introduction to a complex subject of continuous and discrete-event modeling and simulation. With a multitude of real-word examples and hands-on experiences, the book is very accessible to students." —Prof. Masha Sosonkina, Old Dominion University

• PrefaceAuthorSection I Getting Your Feet on the Ground1. Building Your Basic Tool Box2. Getting to Know the Neighborhood3. Visualizing Your Work and Representing Your Best StorySection II Models of Everyday Things4. Things We See in the News: The Fun and the Dangerous 5. The Many Faces of Music6. Going with the FlowSection III Beyond Everyday Phenomena7. One of the Most Versatile Simulation Tools Around8. Simulations that Explore Atoms and Planets Section IV A Glimpse into More Advanced Computing9. Parallel Computing, Scripting and GPU’sAppendix A: Integrated C++ / Python Simulation of Guitar SoundsIndex