Mathematica® 5.0 Workbook Library

George Brandenburg
Harvard University Physics Department

• Introduction
• Mechanics
• Wave Phenomena

Introduction

These workbooks were used as lecture demonstrations in Physics 15a given during the spring semesters of 2001 and 2002 at Harvard University. They were either derived from or inspired by examples in the following book:

Note that the first two chapters in this book are an excellent reference both for the lecturer and students. If you need to install Mathematica on your computer check out the HASCS Software site (FAS has a site license for students and staff).

The idea behind these demonstrations is to show the mathematical solution to simple mechanical problems together with animated graphics. This can be very useful as a supplement to the discussion of a topic, or as a follow-up to an actual live demonstration. In all cases one of the most useful features of the demonstration is the opportunity to vary the input parameters and observe the results. This can be done in the lecture, but since the demonstration workbook can be posted on the course web site, students can also "take the demo home" and run the workbook with different parameters on their own computers.

This page has brief discussions of each of the demo workbooks together with links to them. The workbooks generally start with a statement of the equations of motion together with initial conditions and other parameters. This is followed by either a direct or a numerical solution of the equations and a display of the solution. For those who do not have a computer with Mathematica, pdf output files from each demo are also included.

A few tips on running the demonstrations: An entire demo workbook can be selected with the "Select All" command in the Edit menu (abbreviated command or control A) and then executed with a shift enter (or return). Lines that end with semicolons have output suppressed, but otherwise the results of each step will be shown. In many of the workbooks a multi-frame graphical solution is generated - this can be animated by selecting all the displayed frames (click in the long square bracket enclosing them in the right margin) and then giving the "Animate Selected Graphics" command from the Cell menu (abbreviated command or control Y). Finally, do not save changes before closing a workbook in order to preserve a clean copy without solutions and graphics.

Page last modified Friday, 02-Jun-2006 09:39:03 EDT