A lot of the most important action in science and engineering happen in places we can’t see, for example: water seeping through rock deep underground, oil moving through tiny pores, heat and pollutants spreading in ways that are hard to measure directly. We can’t just slice the Earth open or build a new planet for every experiment; so how do we look inside these hidden worlds?

 In this talk, Maurice will show how computation can act like a flashlight. By running numerical experiments on a computer, we can watch fluids move through tangled rock, try out extreme scenarios that would be impossible or dangerous in the lab, and explore “what if” questions at much lower physical cost. Maurice will share a few examples where simulations surprised us, corrected our intuition, and, in some cases, turned out to be misleading.

Along the way, we’ll talk about how to assess computer simulation results, why small modeling choices can change the picture we see, and how treating simulations like scientific instruments, with lenses, blind spots, and the need for calibration, can make computation a powerful and honest guide in modern science and engineering.