> Do you give it a starting point and apply it to a bunch of elements like some giant automata like game of life?
Roughly speaking yes. Divide all into a grid of cells. Model a cell state with a bunch of numbers, apply some rules to update cell state with neighbors. The trick is to figure out rules of updating state. One needs to write differential equations first, incorporating all relevant physical processes into them, and to transform equations into those rules of updating, which will be a way more complex than with Game of Life.
Though it may be even more complex, like different time steps at different time-points, or changing a grid of cells to increase details in some areas where much is going on by slowing down simulation. Most of complications are due to a limited abilities of our computers: the idea to get more precision by calculating less.
Roughly speaking yes. Divide all into a grid of cells. Model a cell state with a bunch of numbers, apply some rules to update cell state with neighbors. The trick is to figure out rules of updating state. One needs to write differential equations first, incorporating all relevant physical processes into them, and to transform equations into those rules of updating, which will be a way more complex than with Game of Life.
Though it may be even more complex, like different time steps at different time-points, or changing a grid of cells to increase details in some areas where much is going on by slowing down simulation. Most of complications are due to a limited abilities of our computers: the idea to get more precision by calculating less.