Hello Ron,
> I am taking an advanced electromagnetics class and we
> work with vector operations a lot, particularly curl, divergence,
> gradient and laplacian.
.../share/vector/vect.mac is a script containing functions
related to these operators. load(vect); should load it.
(By ... I mean the top-level Maxima installation directory
on your system.)
? express at the command prompt (i.e., same as describe("express");)
will tell you about the express function, which briefly mentions
the operators of interest; from the examples there you should be
able to see how they work. Also try demo("vect"); .
> Secondly, I am taking a control systems class in which we
> use Bode diagrams frequently.
Maxima has the elements to do that, but it's not all put together.
You need to plot log(abs(H(j*omega))) and arg(H(j*omega)) where
H is a ratio of Laplace transforms, right? Maxima can
theoretically do all this, but it is weak on the details ....
There is not yet a function to make Bode plots, but I can
see there's a real need for that, so let's write one.
Help me understand just what it is needed and let's
see what we can do. In particular, do you typically start
with the Laplace transform as a given, or do you have
to calculate that?
best,
Robert Dodier