Physically-based Sound

Can you design a new musical instrument and know how it will sound, even before it is built? Can you make the computer play out sounds of events that could happen in reality (a glass falling on the floor, for example), without actually going through the pain of setting everything up in reality? Can you know how a musical theatre is going to sound even before it is built? Physically-based Sound attempts to do exactly these things by using our understanding of the physics of how sound is produced in nature.