<p align="right">Last Update: <font color="#4f81bd">July, 13, 2024</font></p>
## BIG IDEAS
- A bridge between a theory and reality.
- A simplified representation of reality.
- A model is a representation of something that is difficult to study directly.
- Models are tools to let us visualize phenomena that we normally cannot observe with our senses.
- Models are an approximation.
- Models are constructed based on the result of previous experiments.
- Models are limited to situations.
- For example, an electron cloud model doesn’t show where an electron will be in the cloud.
- Models are a means to communicate an idea or to simplify a system for easier experimentation.
### Types of Models
- representational models
- Physical model
- You might have been introduced to trains by playing with a toy model of trains.
- Hot Wheels®️ are great toys for kids because they model motion as well as they are a representation of full-sized cars and trucks.
- Watson and Crick’s DNA
- models of the solar system that hang from a teacher’s classroom ceiling.
- mathematical models
- equations
- focused only on math.
- computational model
- can be based on a mathematical model.
- computer programs
- simulations
- fictional models
- Ernest Rutherford attempted to explain his gold-foil experiment result by suggesting the results were equivalent to shooting a cannon ball at tissue paper and having the ball bounce back.
- Some argue “anything can be a model” because even a poem can become useful to physicists, e.g., the name quark is from a poem.
### Examples
- [[Particle Model]]
## Video
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