Teaching students to write computer simulations in Java

A course is described in which students are taught how to write computer si mulation programs of physical systems using Java. The advantages of Java in clude its excellent easy to use graphics capabilities, the simplicity and p ower of its interactive user interfaces, the fact that Java runs on many di fferent hardware platforms without change, its ability to run multiple task s simultaneously, the ability to write programs for the Web, and the fact t hat it is an object oriented language which encourages program abstraction. The pedagogical and scientific advantages of these features are also discu ssed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.