Hello,

I am very new to Smath Studio and programming in general. I have been able solve systems directly in Maxima, but am having difficulty doing it through the plugin for Smath. Could someone please give me some tips for how to solve a simple system such as a car accelerating from a stop?

Say I know the distance and time that a car accelerates and I want to determine the acceleration and velocity. Obviously this is a very simple example to do by hand, but I want to understand the technique for how to solve this in Smath using Maxima.

Equations:
d=1/2*a*^2
v=sqrt(2*a*d)

Knowns(t,d)

Unknowns(v,a)

Thanks for the help!

Hello,

Just look at the SMath Active Book by Martin Kraska and you will find under Maxima plugin the answer. For instance, you can use Algsys() function

[MATH=eng]L:Algsys(mat(d≡1/2*a*t^2,v≡sqrt(2*a*d),2,1),mat(v,a,2,1))[/MATH]

[MATH=eng]Assign(L)=sys(sys(2*abs(d)/abs(t),2*d/{t^2},2,1),1,1)[/MATH]

[MATH=eng]v={2*abs(d)}/abs(t)[/MATH] [MATH=eng]a={2*d}/{t^2}[/MATH]

Regards,
Radovan

Great, thank you so much omorr!

I went home and tried using that function tonight and keep getting an error message that the d and v are "not defined". Like I said, I am new to this and I am not quite sure what my mistake is. I really appreciate the help!

That is because you try to get a numeric result. If you use -> (evaluate symbolically) then you get the correct result.
You also can switch evaluation mode via context menu (right mouse button), entry "Optimization"

Wow, thank you both so much! That was super helpful. I need to go brush up on the basics.

Thanks again!