This month, we begin writing a computer program to simulate the physics of racing. Such a program is quite an ambitious one. A simple racing video game, such as "Pole Position," probably took an expert programmer several months to write. A big, realistic game like "Hard Drivin'" probably took three to five people more than a year to create. The point is that the topic of writing a racing simulation is one that we will have to revisit many times in these articles, assuming your patience holds out. There are many "just physics" topics still to cover too, such as springs and dampers, transients, and thermodynamics. Your author hopes you will find the computer programming topic an enjoyable sideline and is interested, as always, in your feedback.

We will use a computer programming language called Scheme. You have probably encountered BASIC, a language that is very common on personal computers. Scheme is like BASIC in that it is interactive. An interactive computer language is the right kind to use when inventing a program as you go along. Scheme is better than BASIC, however, because it is a good deal simpler and also more powerful and modern. Scheme is available for most PCs at very modest cost (MIT Press has published a book and diskette with Scheme for IBM compatibles for about $40; I have a free version for Macintoshes). I will explain everything we need to know about Scheme as we go along. Although I assume little or no knowledge about computer programming on your part, we will ultimately learn some very advanced things.