Advanced Computation Meets ‘Angry Birds
Simulations of natural phenomena – once the preserve of elite researchers – can now be performed on an iPad.
By Rosemarie Wesson with Victor Ugaz
Computational simulations have become indispensable tools in science and engineering. They help us understand fundamental physical phenomena across a broad range of length and time scales and allow us to “see” relationships between complex processes and systems. They also enable us to make predictions in settings where our ability to perform experiments is limited or even nonexistent. Such benefits make simulations and games valuable as educational tools. Using them, learners can see and interact with representations of natural phenomena that would otherwise be impossible to observe and start to understand how those phenomena work.
However, many simulation tools require a level of technical knowledge and equipment that put them out of reach of most undergraduate or high school students. For example, scientists routinely use Brownian dynamics, Monte Carlo, and molecular dynamics approaches to understand the nanoscale phenomena governing how molecules behave. But this important toolbox has historically been available only to a small and exclusive community of researchers possessing high-level computing resources and special expertise.
That’s about to change. Widespread adoption of smartphone and tablet computing devices offers incredible potential to make advanced simulation tools accessible to a broader audience. Apps like Atoms in Motion, for instance, use molecular dynamics to bring the fundamental phenomena governing interactions between atoms to life in a colorful and interactive way.
Recently, Victor Ugaz and graduate student Nan Shi at Texas A&M University have shown how the physics engine that powers popular video games like Angry Birds can be harnessed as a platform to perform complex simulations involving long chain molecules. This approach yields an order-of-magnitude increase in computational efficiency, making it possible for the first time to perform Brownian dynamics simulations of coarse-grained (bead-spring model) polymer transport on ordinary tablet computing devices like the Apple iPad. Video game technology itself captures users’ interest, thereby attracting a broader audience to molecular simulation tools.
In addition to enabling quantitatively accurate simulations, the tablet-based format introduces the opportunity to reimagine how users interact with simulations by employing familiar touch-screen gestures. Instead of the conventional paradigm relying on batch input files, parameters can now be changed using on-screen sliders and buttons that allow users to see the effects instantly. This nearly infinite ability to change parameters and see results in real time places an incredibly sophisticated toolbox — one currently available only to a select few research scientists — in the palm of anyone’s hand.
This new generation of simulation apps exploits the interactivity and scalability of the tablet-based format to make a fundamental nanoscale toolbox accessible to a broad audience. Researchers, students, and the general public can gain a working knowledge of these exciting technologies not widely encountered outside specialized graduate-level coursework. With the use of Ugaz’s app, students in a science class, for example, could run their own simulations, pool the results via crowdsourcing, and obtain statistics revealing how individual realizations combine to govern collective phenomena. Accuracy is improved with more realizations, making this approach ideal for stimulating engagement in large classes.
Simulation technologies are already ubiquitous in science and engineering practice, but their potential to catalyze a similar transformation in STEM education is only beginning to be unlocked. The pervasive adoption of mobile computing devices like smartphones and tablets is breaking down historical barriers imposed by limited availability of computing resources. When combined with recent transformations in education toward interactive, blended-learning classroom formats, the time has never been better for advanced simulation tools to make the jump from the research lab to the mainstream.
Rosemarie D. Wesson, Ph.D., P.E., is a program director in the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Engineering and an adjunct professor of chemical engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Victor Ugaz is an associate professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University.