Is Schrödinger's Cat
Object-Oriented?


By Adolfo M. Nemirovsky


Why Natural Scientists Should Care
About Object-Oriented Technology


Note: You can download the PDF version of this paper. PDF files can be viewed and printed with Adobe's Acrobat(TM) Reader. A free copy of the reader is available from Adobe.


Object-Oriented technology is gaining rapid acceptance among software developers, and is becoming the preferred choice for modern computer programming projects. Should a natural scientist care? We discuss some of the main concepts in object-oriented programming and the potential of this interesting technology. The object model views the world as made of many objects interacting (exchanging messages) with each other to produce a collective behavior. This picture resembles a quantum system of interacting particles. Suggestive analogies between the object model and quantum physics are identified and exploited in this work to provide an introduction to object-oriented programming

This paper is directed to natural scientists and graduate/advanced undergraduate students in physical sciences. Some basic concepts of quantum physics at the level of introductory courses in modern physics or physical chemistry is assumed. Background in quantum mechanics is helpful but not required to understand most of this work. No prior knowledge of C/C++ and object oriented programming is assumed. Most of the C++ code illustrating some of the physics examples presented in the paper is given in the Appendices.


Table of Contents




JavaTM is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Microsoft, Windows and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Other companies, products, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

Copyright    Trademark



  Java Education Java Home  
IBM HomeOrderEmployment