Nature of The Particles
The 'particles' treated by the simulation may or may not correspond to physical objects which are particulate in nature. For example, an N-body simulation of a star cluster might have a particle per star, so each particle has some physical significance. On the other hand a simulation of a gas cloud cannot afford to have a particle for each atom or molecule of gas as this would require billions of particles for each gram of material (see Avogadro constant), so a single 'particle' would represent some much larger quantity of gas (often implemented using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics). This quantity need not have any physical significance, but must be chosen as a compromise between accuracy and manageable computer requirements.
Read more about this topic: N-body Simulation
Famous quotes containing the words nature of the, nature of, nature and/or particles:
“In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.”
—Karl Marx (18181883)
“Technological change defines the horizon of our material world as it shapes the limiting conditions of what is possible and what is barely imaginable. It erodes ... assumptions about the nature of our reality, the pattern in which we dwell, and lays open new choices.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.”
—Victor Hugo (18021885)
“In anothers sentences the thought, though it may be immortal, is as it were embalmed, and does not strike you, but here it is so freshly living, even the body of it not having passed through the ordeal of death, that it stirs in the very extremities, and the smallest particles and pronouns are all alive with it. It is not simply dictionary it, yours or mine, but IT.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)