Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca!mroussel From: mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata Subject: Re: questions Message-ID: <1990Oct29.184009.4902@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> Date: 29 Oct 90 18:40:09 GMT References: <1990Oct28.204508.22984@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> <6910@castle.ed.ac.uk> Distribution: comp Organization: Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto Lines: 23 In article <6910@castle.ed.ac.uk> egnr76@castle.ed.ac.uk (A Kashko) writes: >In article <1990Oct28.204508.22984@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> > mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) writes: >>most of the people who do CA simulations wouldn't say that CA's are >>better than DE's, but that they are a useful tool in cases where the >>essential features of the problem are clear but the DE's are either too >>complicated to be conveniently solved, or the system under consideration >>is not sufficiently well understood to be modelled by DE's. >>(Writing DE's after >>all requires in-depth knowledge of the inner workings of a system.) >Well, the polymer CA models I am working on needed an indepth knowledge of >the PHysics as well. In fact I had to sit down with a couple of Polymer/MD >simulation experts at one point to make sure I hade the physics right. I didn't mean to imply that CA's exempted you from knowing physics, only that they allowed you to extract the important bits of physics and ignore the rest. DE's are often quite sensitive to coupling so that you have to worry a lot more about the stuff you decide to ignore when you model a system that way. Marc R. Roussel mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca