Physics in Computer science

Question

Without physics knowledge(or,little knowledge),can someone be good at computer science?or,what's the relationship between physics and cs?

Answer 1

Yes, quite easily. The only places where physics is useful in computer science is in game programming and physics research.

Although, in my opinion, there is certainly a correlation between physics bods and computer bods, if only because of a similar mindset.

But you don't have to know any physics to be good with computer science, or vice versa.

Answer 2

I think even with OS design, knowing physics is not really useful at all. The only level at which physics is really useful at all is at the circuit level, but even then that's more EE than physics. Simply put, physics has almost nothing to do with CS unless you're doing simulation work as Pax said. CS is more related to math than any other field.

With computer architecture, you're rarely working at such a low level that physics knowledge is super important. Of course, someone working on a chip will need to know the physics behind signal propagation and how fast a clock signal can be, how much raising the clock rate affects physical characteristics such as temperature and power consumption, but for the average person designing an ISA, I don't think physics considerations really go into it that much. If you're working in fabrication related fields, you might need to know more physics, but that's getting farther away from CS.

Answer 3

I'd suggest there is more of a relation between Maths and Computer Science, rather than Physics. Physics comes into it where the problem domain requires (E.g. 3D environments in gaming), but even then, it's still using the sections of Physics that overlap with Maths (well, at least the syllabi I studied, many moons ago).

Answer 4

Certainly. The blessing and curse of computer science is that it is not bounded by physical law. Well, almost not bounded. There are some thermodynamic limits on the implementation of any real computer. See for example Feynman and Computation. However, any implementation currently practical is a very long way from the theoretical limits so the thermodynamic limits are mostly of interest to physicists rather then computer scientists. There is also quantum computation, but that's also a pretty rarefied topic, affecting very few computer scientists.

I think even folks doing computer architecture, and networking protocols pretty much work with the abstractions provided by the electrical engineers and chip designers. Electrical engineers and chip designers can end up needing a lot of physics. In fact the line between electrical engineer and physicist can get very blurry.

In fact, the requirement really goes the other way. Good physicists have to know something about computer science (well, programming anyway).

Answer 5

Knowing physics is only needed for few things in programming that I can think of:

1. Real-time programming where actually you need knowledge about electronics which is very related to physics.

2. Physics engine for graphical software. This is basically to know how stuff react when thrown, bumped into something else. May be knowledge about lenses and how light passes through.

3. Like I said before light is very related to 3D rendering software.

For the general programming (GUI, server, web applications), I don't think physics is needed. But I must say that physics is very interesting topic.

I know many good programmers that doesn't have a clue in physics and a lot of physicists that are very bad at programming.

Answer 6

Physics comes into play in certain scientific problem domains (astronomy, space, aeronautics, marine architecture, weather simulation), in computer game development (eg, physics engines), and very much so in hardware design. Another area where physics is extremely important is in speech recognition and speech synthesis systems. Indirectly, physics probably inculcates patterns of abstract thought that help indirectly. But if you're planning on a career in software development, at most 5% of the positions need college level physics. I've done a couple of decades of advanced development (compiler writing, domain-specific language design, a query optimizer for a DBMS, a web browser, etc.), and except for a short foray into mobile gaming have never needed physics.

Answer 7

Numbers are the Supreme Court of science. However Godel proved that we may not prove everything. There are Physics Foibles!!