Editing Computational physics (section)

== Applications ==
Due to the broad class of problems computational physics deals, it is an essential component of modern research in different areas of physics, namely: [[accelerator physics]], [[astrophysics]], [[general theory of relativity]] (through [[numerical relativity]]), [[fluid mechanics]] ([[computational fluid dynamics]]), [[lattice field theory]]/[[lattice gauge theory]] (especially [[lattice QCD|lattice quantum chromodynamics]]), [[plasma physics]] (see [[plasma modeling]]), simulating physical systems (using e.g. [[molecular dynamics]]), [[nuclear engineering computer codes]], [[protein structure prediction]], [[weather prediction]], [[solid state physics]], [[soft condensed matter]] physics, hypervelocity impact physics etc.

Computational solid state physics, for example, uses [[density functional theory]] to calculate properties of solids, a method similar to that used by chemists to study molecules.  Other quantities of interest in solid state physics, such as the electronic band structure, magnetic properties and charge densities can be calculated by this and several methods, including the [[Luttinger-Kohn model|Luttinger-Kohn]]/[[k.p method]] and [[ab-initio]] methods.

On top of advanced physics software, there are also a myriad of tools of analytics available for beginning students of physics such as the PASCO Capstone software.