In computational science and engineering, there are five identifiable stages in the computer solution of a problem. The first stage consist in presenting a physical problem. A mathematical model derived for this problem is the second stage. An appropriate solution method is next. The following stage is the implementation in a C++ program. The final stage is the assessment.
In this lesson we use the modeling of a robotic arm to present the stages of computational science and engineering. The case study considers the kinematics of a robotic arm. We use this opportunity to discuss several ideas about programming in the C++ language. We will discuss how variables, data types, and assignments are expressed in C++. Each of these stages is presented as a separate section is this lesson.