If you go to a search engine and type in something like "physics computer simulation", then you might hope to be looking at a gravitational many-body program or a relativistic flight simulator. If that is the case, then you may be somewhat disappointed by what you actually get. The purpose of this 'gateway' is to point you in a direction where such software may be found, with the emphasis on free software which you could get running in a single session.
There are several of these gateways, each intended to trap a slightly different enquiry in the general area of physics computer software for simulation. If we were trying to sell you something, we would be guilty of 'spamming'. As it is, this is genuinely free software and we make no apologies.
Distributing physics computer software of educational value to everyone in the world ought to be an overriding primary use of the Internet. In these gateways and on the author's website, you can see all the technology in action to be able to do this. If you know of any other websites which might be included, then please e-mail the author so that they may be listed.
The emphasis is on here-and-now free physics software. Shareware of an open character will also be considered. Commercial software may be dealt with separately.
There is a gravitational many-body program on the author's website in the QBasic program GRAV.BAS. There is also a modest relativistic flight simulator RFS.BAS, and special relativity gets more coverage in RODS.BAS and RELAY.BAS. There is a quantum mechanical two-slit interference experiment demonstration in WPD.BAS. There is a demonstration of the Van Allen Belt in VALLEN.BAS, a demonstration of the Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability in KHI.BAS, and of the Von Karman vortex street in KARMAN.BAS. We hope that you enjoy these programs. We hope that they are the first of many.
You probably have QBasic available somewhere on your computer. It is bundled in with MS-DOS 5.0 and later versions of MS-DOS and must be the most widely available programming language.
The author's entire website can be downloaded and transferred to floppy disk. There is a map of the website in a README.TXT file, so anyone should be able to access the site, know what is going on and run the programs even on an old 8088/DOS/CGA computer with no web browser. A university in a developing country could download the website, and distribute multiple copies to local schools and colleges. A visiting lecturer from a developing country could do the same. See the potential?
The author's ambition is to produce the first computer simulation of quantum mechanical wave-particle duality. If he cannot achieve that ambition, then he hopes that someone else will do it, probably someone who has met the problem thanks to the author's efforts. The Internet gives us the chance to deploy massive resources of human brainpower and computer processing power to tackle a problem which is expected to be difficult.
Suppose that you set up a website to propose that anyone producing physics computer software should be arrested by the secret police and tortured to death. A search engine will see the words 'physics computer software' in your website, and may give it the same priority as a website containing genuine computer programs. There is currently no mechanism in any known search engine for spotting the Real Thing and prioritising it over facetious rubbish. This is why we have resorted to a bit of spamming to make sure you get to see the Real Thing.
As you can see, we currently have eight gateways out on picket duty.
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