The number of boundary conditions for initial boundary value problems

Both the energy method and the Laplace transform method are frequently used for determining the number of boundary conditions required for a well posed initial boundary value problem. We show that these two distinctly different methods yield the same results. The continuous energy method can be mimicked exactly in the corresponding semidiscrete problems discretized using the summation-by-parts technique. Hence the analysis of well posedness and stability can bypass the more unwieldy Laplace transform method.