Understanding Physics and Physical Chemistry Using Formal Graphs

Rezensionen / Stimmen

Vieil presents a universal toolkit-Formal Graphs-for understanding a wide range of scientific domains. ... mainly for graduate students, researchers and specialists, and engineers; the process itself would even be accessible to undergraduate students ... . The disk contains all the graphs, in color bitmap files, and software for building simple electric circuits and translating them into Formal Graphs.
-SciTech News, Vol. 66, September 2012

Vieil (French Atomic Energy Agency) discusses the use of formal graphs in physics and chemistry to facilitate an understanding of these subjects. This method has four primary purposes. First, pedagogically, students can benefit from considering theoretical systems in a non-algebraic way. With pictorial representations, students can more easily see relationships between elements of a theory and the similarities of formal graph structures among theories. Second, since formal graphs are neural networks, it is much easier to translate the science into algorithms if one starts with the graphs. Third, scientists already familiar with one area can more easily learn and gain insight into a new area that is using the same formal graph. Finally, researchers can benefit by examining the work of researchers in other disciplines that are considering the same formal graphs. This is an intriguing way to represent the science. The author provides more than 80 case studies to illustrate this method. A companion CD-ROM includes all of the book's formal graphs as well as software for translating simple examples into formal graphs. The related website contains a variety of supplementary materials. Recommended.
-E. Kincanon, Gonzaga University, CHOICE, August 2012