Astrophysics simulations - The consortium for upper-level physics software

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The best way to utilise microcomputers in support of undergraduate teaching remains a matter of taste, not to say controversy. Can computers enhance the traditional lecture or are they better suited to be used interactively by individual students to make `drill and practice' exercises more stimulating and efficient? Should their use be confined to data analysis And computational modelling and what is the role of on-line experiments and real-time data acquisitions These and similar questions are regularly discussed round the coffee percolator in university departments. While microcompilers and workstations have found their way long ago into the teaching laboratories of physics departments their entry into lecture halls or tutorial rooms has been significantly slower. One reason for this may have been a dearth of really good software packages but, more probably, the real cause is the difficulty in setting up robust systems in lecture rooms. In the name of efficiency lecture rooms in many universities have come under central control - `The Physics Lecture Theatre' is a thing of the past in all but the most well endowed institutions. Lecturers forced to drag a 486 or PowerMac from office to lecture hall on a regular basis will soon revert to chalk (or OHP) and talk. In any event, there is little point in bringing along the computer to large classrooms unless a decent (and working!) projection monitor is installed. The book and bundled software under review here is one of nine course modules produced in the United States under the CUPS (Consortium for Upper-Level Physics Software) programme. Accordingly, it is aimed at junior (3rd) and senior (4th) year undergraduates in US colleges and universities. Like the other CUPS modules the course does not pretend to be a highly polished professional `multimedia product', which it certainly is not; rather it is a collection of well tested robust simulations produced by university teachers for use with their more advanced undergraduate students. The software comes on a single 3.5 inch disk and unzips into over twenty programs of varying length and complexity. The stated minimum hardware configuration is a 386-level machine, mouse and VGA monitor but for many of the modules significantly faster speed would seem to be desirable (a math coprocessor is certainly essential if a 386 is to be used). The user interface is reasonably friendly but the on-screen help is minimal. A common screen layout gives a sense of continuity but fails to hide the fact that this is a multiauthor production. This is also evident from inspection of the code and, more significantly, from the varying pedagogical philosophies adopted. The topics covered also reflect the different interests and expertise of the authors - binary stars, N-body motion, galactic kinematics, a model of stellar interiors, stellar evolution, stellar pulsations and a model of stellar atmospheres. The first three topics on this list comprise a large number of short programs, while the others involve quite large amounts of code. All the code is written in Borland/Turbo Pascal and users are encouraged to modify the code for themselves - some suggestions in this direction are given but users who have become familiar with the package will undoubtedly experiment for themselves. This `personalization' property should be an essential feature of simulation software for teaching but is too often missing in commercial packages. The simulations are intended to accompany a lecture course programme in astrophysics but the limited set of topics may not be those that every lecturer would choose for an undergraduate course. The theoretical procedures underlying the software are sound, sophisticated and well covered in the accompanying book. The book is clear and well written and is an essential companion for any user. It is not intended, however, to substitute for a course textbook - an extensive list of references is provided. The authors suggest that lecturers may wish to use the packages as lecture demonstrations or that they may be used in an interactive manner by students to insight and develop intuition into material covered in a lecture course. This reviewer feels that student use is likely to be more beneficial - the quality of the graphics while satisfactory, may not be up to the standard of presentation in lecture demonstrations expected by students today.