Purpose:
Both your calc instructors and I have been working on integrating Maple into our courses for several years. We don't do this just to be abusive but rather because it really is a very useful tool and sooner or later if you stay in one of these science/math fields you will need to use Maple or one of it's fellow calculating engines to solve problems. Because these are large and complex programs (comes along with being powerful) and the logic that is embedded in the software is unfamiliar to many it takes a while to learn to be comfortable with the package. I currently structure my labs to integrate this learning process consciously into the curriculum instead of just jamming it in there with everything else we are already doing. You will get out of this learning opportunity just what you put into it so avoid the urge to short cut through the activities and take the time to think through and explore as much as possible. This lab begins the process of getting to know Maple.
I gratefully acknowledge that I am "borrowing with attribution" much of this material from the course resources from Physics 230 at BYU (they've shifted to Mathematica now!). These materials were developed by Ross Spencer and he has done a great job. There are other computational physics links on this site and if you are interested in such things you'll find them very cool. I will download and link these worksheets locally just for ease of use but you are free to download from the BYU site if you wish..
Here is a Maple tutorial from a computational physics class courtesy of our friends up north:)
Here is a Maple tutorial from a computational physics class courtesy of our friends down south:)
Procedure:
In this case the procedure is pretty simple -- go through the MapleIntro worksheet reading and executing all relevant steps. The worksheet is zipped to keep the COCC server happy so you will need to unzip it. Think about the problems posed at various points but they are not required. Remember that if you have questions or confusions it may be very handy to post those questions to the Maple discussion folder on Bb - share the confusion for the benefit of all:)