Virtual Laboratories

At the frontier of most areas in science, computer simulations play a centralrole. The traditional division of natural science into experimental andtheoretical investigations is now completely outdated. Instead, theory,simulation, and experimentation form three equally essential aspects, each withits own unique flavor and challenges. Yet, education in computational scienceis still lagging far behind, and the number of text books in this area isminuscule compared to the many text books on theoretical and experimentalscience. As a result, many researchers still carry out simulations in ahaphazard way, without properly setting up the computational equivalent of awell equipped laboratory. The art of creating such a virtual laboratory, whileproviding proper extensibility and documentation, is still in its infancy. Anew approach is described here, Open Knowledge, as an extension of the notionof Open Source software. Besides open source code, manuals, and primers, anopen knowledge project provides simulated dialogues between code developers,thus sharing not only the code, but also the motivations behind the code.Comment: to appear in Prog. Theor. Phy