Vector analysis and bode plots



Hi -

I am a college student who discovered Maxima recently and think it is 
great.  A lot of power, for not a lot of money.  Not bad.

Still, I find myself needing to do some things that I would like to do 
with Maxima, and I am wondering if they are possible.  First of all, I 
am taking an advanced electromagnetics class and we work with vector 
operations a lot, particularly curl, divergence, gradient and 
laplacian.  I have not seen any description of these functions in my 
searches.  It doesn't seem like it would be too terribly hard to write, 
but I don't know how to write functions in Maxima, and how I could have 
them automatically load up when I start.

Secondly, I am taking a control systems class in which we use Bode 
diagrams frequently.  Generally we do all of our work in Matlab, but one 
person likes to use MathCad and it occurred to me that Maxima might be 
able to do some of this, if Bode plots can be done.  Not a lot on that 
subject either.  So, do any of you more experienced Maxima users have 
some suggestions for me on what I can do, where I can to, to satisfy 
these needs?  Thanks a ton.

-Ron Crummett