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Differential
Equations (92.236) For this class, Matlab was chosen as the tool for visualization, analytical and numerical solution, and comprehensive analysis of several applications involving ODEs. The student is not expected to be familiar with Matlab at the beginning of this course, although many students do get a introduction to Matlab as part of some of their Freshmen or Sophomore level courses. In this course, we will be working with Matlab to help simulate, visualize, and understand the physical systems under study. We will use Matlab's numerical and symbolic capability to actually solve a variety of ODEs, and we will use its plotting and visualization tools to help us interpret the solutions that we obtain either analytically or via Matlab's built-in tools. To help in this endeavor, a specific Matlab lab time has been set aside to help you become familiar with the basics of Matlab, and to illustrate some of its capabilities for solving and analyzing ODEs. A series of Matlab Lab Exercises has been prepared to help guide our study of Matlab. These lab exercises will be used in the Thursday lab sessions to help focus our activities. The exercises introduce the basic mathematical operations and specific syntax used within Matlab, illustrate the use of Matlab for evaluating and plotting functions, and highlight several techniques for solving and visualizing differential equations (both numerically and symbolically). These lab exercises should give you a good introduction to the powerful capabilities that are available in modern numerical and symbolic tools like Matlab. I think you will find that this material will be very useful in this course, as well as in many of your other courses and in your future careers... Enjoy!!! Last updated by Prof. John R. White (January 2006) |