Simulation & Models : Introduction

A computer simulation is a computer program which attempts to duplicate or predict the behaviour of a real life system.

Commercial airline pilots learn how to fly by using a flight simulator rather than flying real aircraft. The flight simulator puts a pilot in copies of real-life flight situations and reacts to a pilot's actions in the same way as a real aircraft would. It is much safer and cheaper for airlines to teach pilots to fly this way. There are three main reasons for using a simulation rather than actually doing something. They are :

• Cost : Using a simulation can be much cheaper than actually doing something. Crashing cars to see how the passengers (replaced by dummies) are affected by an impact would be very expensive. Many cars would be destroyed. Simulating this on a computer is far cheaper.

• Safety : Some things are very dangerous. Finding out what would happen if a cooling system failed in a nuclear reactor by actually turning the system off would be highly dangerous. Using physical laws the effect could be predicted by a computer simulation.

• Feasibility : There are some things that humans simply can not do. It would be interesting to be able to travel through a human body to see how the organs in the body worked. Unfortunately a human simply can't do this. But a human can use a simulation which shows what it would be like to travel around a body.

Simulations use rules and variables to model a real life situation.

GCSE ICT Companion 04 - (C) P Meakin 2004