Teaching students to write computer simulations in Java

Abstract A course is described in which students are taught how to write computer simulation programs of physical systems using Java. The advantages of Java include its excellent easy to use graphics capabilities, the simplicity and power of its interactive user interfaces, the fact that Java runs on many different hardware platforms without change, its ability to run multiple tasks simultaneously, the ability to write programs for the Web, and the fact that it is an object oriented language which encourages program abstraction. The pedagogical and scientific advantages of these features are also discussed.