Question: why do you use a computer in your job

Joe Reed answered on 17 Nov 2014:

I use my computer to try to simulate real-world physics using models that try to capture the key features of the process.
Many things that scientists want to understand are extremely complex so we use computers to try to understand them better. If we make a model and it gives similar results to what we see in the real world then we can say we have a fairly good understanding of the science behind it. We can also use these models to find out ‘what-if’ scenarios. For example in climate models, scientists can ask ‘ What if we continue to pollute the atmosphere like we are now for the next 100 years’. They can then see the effect it would have on the climate.