I spent a while thinking that I was going to be a mechanical engineer, and took a few of the ME intro courses. Engineering statics and dynamics can be phrased entirely in terms of linear algebra, though the courses I took didn't present them as such. Materials analysis is highly computational in nature and could be interesting. When I took these courses, I'd spend about 1-2 hours a week programming my TI calculator to do my homework, and about 5 minutes actually doing my homework (for the record, my professors were aware of, and pleased as punch with this approach).
When I took the physics prerequisites for these courses, the problems we had to do were 1-2 variable toys. The engineering homework frequently had a number of rigid bodies in motion relative to one another -- and involved solving systems of linear equations in 6-10 variables. If I were you, I'd look through Hibbeler's texts for "typical" problems that it should be easy to input and solve. In fact, you can borrow my copy some time, if you like. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 11:14 AM, kstueve <kevin.stu...@gmail.com> wrote: > > As my work on prime_pi and nth_prime is drawing to a close, William > Stein and I have discussed the possibility of me making a graphical > physics program to be included in Sage, the free open source math > program. > > An example of the desired functionality is to either with a few lines > of code from within a Sage worksheet, or by clicking buttons in a > graphical user interface (GUI) create a physics problem with > components such as ramps, blocks, balls, pulleys, and springs, and > processes such as motion (translational or rotational), collisions > (elastic, inelastic, completely inelastic), and forces (friction, > gravity, normal forces, driving forces, etc). > > I am expecting the VIGRE grant from the National Science Foundation > (NSF) to support my work, so I will be able to devote a lot of time to > this project. > > I would like to obtain any and all suggestions for what features, > functionality etc. could be included in this program. Please don't be > afraid to contribute an idea. No suggestion is too large or too > small. > > A few of the possible ideas that I have come up with so far: > > Allowing time to be solved for-e.g. exactly how long does it take for > an event to occur, such as for velocity to reach 0. > > Using multi-precision arithmetic and error analysis to solve a problem > to a specified accuracy-e.g. what is the velocity of an object at a > certain time to the 100th decimal (for problems that don't include too > much chaos). > > Creating a human readable physics problem specification language that > allows the locations and properties of each component to be specified > (perhaps similar to standard circuit specification languages). > > Allow matrices, systems of DEs, tables of values, etc that describe > the physics problem to be accessed with Sage commands. > > Symbolic solving for problems that lend themselves to symbolic > solving. > > Plotting variables such as velocity, kinetic energy etc. with respect > to time. > > Plotting more complicated functions such as the amount of time a block > takes to slide to the bottom of a ramp with respect to the ramp's > angle. > > Make architecture easily extensible so new components can be made by > the user > > Three dimensional graphics and problems (after 2D is finished) > > Kevin Stueve > kstu...@uw.edu > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
