Maple exercises and examples
Maple is an excellent tool for analyzing and visualizing a lot of the physics concepts we will cover in the course. Numerical simulations are used to (approximately) solve dynamical systems that can't be solved analytically,and to provide graphical and visual displays of the interdependence of dynamical variables to help you see what is going on in the system. They are good tools for building intuition and testing predictions.
The Maple worksheets below provide some numerical exercises and examples illustrating some of the topics covered. They are meant for you to use, modify and explore the material further as well as to learn this numerical tool. The best way to learn Maple is by looking at some example tutorials (below) and using the on-line help.
| Lecture # | TOPIC | LINK |
| Tutorial I | Maple tutorial: General notation, simple arithmetic, numerical values, and assigning expressions - Defining functions and solving algebraic equations - Simple 2D plot - Parametric 2D plot - Animation of 2D plots through a single variable, like time - More complicated 2D plots and animation by creating a sequence of frames - Simple 3D surface plots - Parametric 3D line curves - More complicated 3D plots and animations by creating a sequence of frames (almost the same as 2D) | (Maple Worksheet) |
| Tutorial II | Another tutorial illustrating the use of calculus, complex numbers, plots, and linear algebra | (Maple worksheet) |
| Tutoral III | Example of flux and gradients | (Maple worksheet) |
| Lecture #7 | Example illustrating periodic motion associated with conservation of energy | (Maple worksheet) |
| Lecture #8 | Simple Harmonic Motion (with animation of a spring) | (Maple worksheet) |
| Lecture #13 | Examples of Fourier series | (Maple worksheet) |
| Lecture #13 | Fourier series of a square wave | (Maple worksheet) |
| Lecture #14 and #15 | Illustrations of 1D waves and superposition of 1D waves | (Maple worksheet) |
| Lecture #15 | Superposition of waves | (Maple worksheet) |
| Lecture #15 | Time evolution of standing waves in a string | (Maple worksheet) |
| Lecture #21 and #22 | Interference and diffraction from sinlge and multiple slits | (Maple worksheet) |