Applications in Physical Sciences

Predicting the Trajectory of a Martinez Curve Ball

It's poetry in motion ... hard, tight and low. And with the help of computational science, you can do what major-league batters only dream of: figure out where it's going to go and when.

If you took high school physics, you're already familiar with the baseball problem. But there are a lot more forces acting on that baseball than you considered, such as:

• Air resistance
• The spin of the ball
• The curvature of the earth

In a course, called "Computational Physics," you will use mathematical models and the principles of physics to build a complex, realistic mathematical model for a moving ball. You'll solve the model using powerful mathematical and computational software. And you'll view the ball's trajectory and perform virtual experiments with special visualization software.

This is only one example of how computational science can be used to advance the study of the physical sciences.