An Introduction to Computational Science

An Introduction to Computational Science provides an introduction to the growing interdisciplinary field of computational science. It combines a foundational development of numerical methods with a variety of illustrative applications spread across numerous areas of science and engineering. The intended audience is the undergraduate who has completed introductory coursework in mathematics and computer science. Students gain computational acuity by authoring their own numerical routines and by practicing with numerical methods as they solve computational models.

The text is written in two parts. Part I provides a succinct, one-term inauguration into the primary routines on which a further study of computational science rests. The material is organized so that the transition to computational science from coursework in calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra is natural. Beyond the mathematical and computational content of Part I, students gain proficiency with elemental programming constructs and visualization, which are presented in MATLAB. The focus of Part II is modeling, wherein students build computational models, compute solutions, and report their findings. The models purposely intersect numerous areas of science and engineering to demonstrate the pervasive role played by computational science.

MATLAB code is used throughout the book.