Yes, you read that right! Steps documents are a feature in Maple Learn that we wanted to highlight this week, as they can provide great use in understanding concepts and solving problems. Within them, they can show all steps to solve a problem, including reminders of any formulas used! They can be found at the homepage for steps documents. A list of all can be found below the image, with links.

All steps documents:

• Calculus
  • Derivative Steps
  • Limit Steps
• Algebra and Equations Steps
  • Expansion Steps
  • Simplification Steps
  • Solving Equation Steps
  • Factoring Steps
• Matrix Steps
  • Determinant Steps
  • Eigenvector Steps
  • Inverse Steps
  • Gauss-Jordan Elimination Steps
  • Gaussian Elimination Steps

All of our documents follow the same format, which I’ll show you using 3 different documents: Derivatives Steps, Factoring Steps, and Matrix Determinant Steps. They will be shown from left to right in that order, so you can see the different steps and how they work.

The first thing you’ll see on any steps document is the place to enter the equation. Each equation can be entered in the appropriate box, in different styles to fit your needs and the problem asked.

Then, you click on the show steps button, which is the same for all of the documents:

This is where the magic happens. The steps will appear line by line, in great detail. The actual steps are generated by Maple, and presented in Maple Learn through scripting. Because of this, please don’t click off the group the steps appear in, or they’ll appear in the new group as well!

There are many other steps documents than the ones we have here, and will be adding more as time goes on. Please keep an eye out, and enjoy the updates! We hope this was helpful to you all, and let us know if there are any other steps you’d like to see.

Today I’m here with a document walkthrough under the subject of graph theory! Do you know what an Eulerian path is? Have you ever tried to find one?

An Eulerian path is a path that uses every edge in the graph exactly once. Vertices can be revisited, just not the edges. There are mathematical ways to find an Eulerian path, but at the level of math I’m at, I just use my eyes!

In the document Eulerian Paths Quiz, we focus on trying to find an Eulerian path. This document, created using Maple scripting, uses the click on plot feature, allowing you to click on the edges and check your answer. When an edge is clicked, it turns red, and feedback is given.

If you make a mistake, there are a few options. If the most recent edge chosen is the mistake, you can simply click on it again to undo the selection. However, if the mistake is several edges back, or you need to undo the whole thing, you can click the blue reset button.

Once you’ve done one, you might want to try another graph. That’s why we have a try another button, to give you another random new graph.

We hope you enjoy this document! If you’re curious about how this document was scripted, you can see our script HERE. Please let us know if there are any specific documents you’d like as a walkthrough in the comments below, and check out our other graph theory documents.

For a long time I could not understand how to make a kinematic analysis of this device based on the coupling equations (like here). The equations were drawn up relative to the ends of the grips (horns), that is, relative to the coordinates of 4 points. That's 12 equations. But then only a finite number of mechanism positions take place (as shown by RootFinding[Isolate]). It turns out that there is no continuous transition between these positions. Then it is natural to assume that the movement can be obtained with the help of a small deformation. It seemed that if we discard the condition of a constant distance between the midpoints of the horns (this is the f7 equation at the very beginning), then this will allow us to obtain minimal distortion during movement. In fact, the maximum distortion during the movement was in the second decimal place.
(It seemed that these guys came to a similar result, but analytically "Configuration analysis of the Schatz linkage" C-C Lee and J S Dai
Department of Tool and Die-Making Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Department of Mechanical Engineering, King’s College, University of London, UK)
The left racks are input.


The first text is used to calculate the trajectory, and the other two show design options based on the data received.
For data transfer, a disk called E is used.
Schatz_mechanism_2_0.mw
OF_experimental_1_part_3_Barrel.mw
OF_experimental_1_part_3.mw

Maple Learn is an incredibly powerful tool for math and plotting, but it is made even more powerful when used in combination with Maple! Using scripting tools in Maple, we can make use of hundreds of commands that can solve complex problems for us. In the example of the Lagrange calculator, we are able to use the Maple command LagrangeMultipliers to generate a plot of the two functions and the critical points, even including text feedback about the points.

Something like this seems like it would take hours and a lot of coding knowledge to create, but a simple Maple command generates the entire plot for us! Then, all we had to do was use a button to update the plot. Give it a try yourself in Maple, run the following command with two functions f and g of your choosing:

That’s all there is to it! We now have a complex 3D plot showing the Lagrange problem, something that can be difficult to visualize in multivariate calculus. If we want detailed feedback about the Lagrange problem values, simply change output to detailed from plot:

Check out the entire Maple document (.mw file) to see how the Learn page was generated and to try things out for yourself. This entire document uses the LagrangeMultipliers command, but Maple has hundreds more to experiment with, so the possibilities are virtually limitless!

Share your creations here on MaplePrimes and tag us in your posts.

Maple Learn Document: https://learn.maplesoft.com/doc/lagrange-multipliers-calculator-1biue2ben9

Maple .mw file: https://maple.cloud/app/5998067190071296/LagrangeCalculatorCritical?key=54CE05EC89B34E47984BC61C329A6E759658927BED02458095DA1F576CD93DB9

Maple Learn has a new face! We’ve changed our homepage to the document gallery, which some of you may have already noticed. This is a huge change, and we’re excited for it, as it places content front and center: the goal of Maple Learn. Don’t worry, getting to a blank document is still easy. There is a large orange button on the top right of the document gallery which says “start creating now”. This button will take you to a blank Maple Learn Document.

The most important reason for this change is to help new users get started. Seeing a blank document can sometimes be terrifying! With this new homepage, users can immediately begin looking through premade content, and get inspiration for their own documents.

The first document collection a user sees in the document gallery is still the same: Our featured collection. From there, we have the Maple Learn how-to documents, and then it’s into documents sorted by the overarching subject. Two examples of overarching subjects are Functions and Biology. And, if a user is interested in some of the more artistic sides of Maple Learn, we have our art collection available as well. There’s something for everyone in our gallery!

Now that we’ve explained the largest change, let’s talk about some smaller ones too. Tables now can have row and column headings, allowing for a greater range of data to be represented. Along with that, we’ve added a correlation command to the context panel. Some bugs have also been fixed: Special characters now appear properly in the French and German galleries and scrollbars work over 3D plots.

We hope you enjoy the changes we’ve made. Please continue to report bugs and telling us about features you’d like to see!

Download document: The_field_of_moving_charges.mw

Download PDF with sections open: The_field_of_moving_charges.pdf

Edgardo S. Cheb-Terrab
Physics, Differential Equations and Mathematical Functions, Maplesoft

Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to our third post about how you can use Maple Learn in non-math disciplines! Today, we’re going to talk about the Biology collection in Maple Learn. This was a recent addition to the Maple Learn document gallery.

Of course, there are too many documents in the Biology collection to talk about all of them. We’re going to talk about three documents today, and I’ll link to them as we go. Are you excited? I am!

First, let’s talk about the Introduction to Alleles and Genotype document. The current focus of our Biology collection is genetics. This document is therefore important to start with as it lays the foundation for understanding the rest of the documents. Using a visualization of a sperm cell and an egg cell, this document clearly explains what alleles and genotypes are, and how this presents in humans and other diploid organisms.

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Next is the Introduction to Punnett Squares. Punnett squares are used to predict genotypes and the probability of those genotypes existing in an organism. They can be pretty fun, once you get the hang of them, and are simple to understand using this document. We use the table feature in Maple Learn to display the Punnett squares, which is quite a handy feature for visualizations.

Finally, although there are other introductory documents (Phenotypes, Dihybrid crosses), let’s take a look at the Blood Typing document! As you may know, there are four main blood types (when you exclude the positive or negative): A, B, AB, and O. However, there are only three alleles, due to codominance and other factors. Come check out how this works, and read the document yourself!

Our Biology collection is still growing, and we’d love to hear your input. Let us know in the comments of this post if there are any other document topics you’d like to see!

Last week, we took a look at the Chemistry documents in Maple Learn. After writing that post, I started thinking more about the types of documents we have in the document gallery. From there, I realized we’d made several updates to the Physics collection, and added a Biology collection, that I hadn’t written about yet! So, this week, we’ll be talking about the Physics collection, and next week, we’ll have a discussion about the Biology collection. Without further ado, let’s take a look!

First, let’s talk Kinematics. This collection has been around for a while now, and if you’ve looked at the Physics documents, you’ve likely seen it. We have documents for Displacement, Velocity, and Acceleration, Equations 1 to 4 for Kinematics, 1D motion, and 2D motion. Let’s take a look at the 2D motion example, shall we?

In this document, we explore projectile motion. You can use sliders to change the initial velocity and the height of a projectile, in order to see how they affect the object’s motion. Then, in group two, you can adjust the number of seconds after an object has been released in order to see how the velocity changes. The resulting graph is shown above this paragraph.

Next, we also have documents on Energy, Simple Harmonic Motion, and Waves (interference and harmonics). These documents were added over the last few months, and we’re excited to share them! Opening the document used as an example for wave harmonics (link provided again here), we’re immediately given a description of the important background knowledge, and then a visualization, shown below. This allows you to see how waves change based on the harmonics and over time.

Finally, we have documents on Electricity and Magnetism, Dynamics, and some miscellaneous documents, like our document on the inverse square law applied to Gravity. Within these document collections, we have quizzes, information, and many more visualizations!

The Physics collection is quite an interesting collection, we hope you enjoy! As with the Chemistry documents, please let us know if there’s any topics you’d like to see in our document gallery.

We have just released an update to Maple, Maple 2022.1.

Maple 2022.1 includes improvements to the math engine, Plot Builder, Print Layout mode, and more.  We strongly recommend that all Maple 2022 users install these updates.

This update is available through Tools>Check for Updates in Maple, and is also available from our website on the Maple 2022.1 download page, where you can also find more details.

In particular, please note that this update includes fixes to problems with Units:-Simple (here and here), evala, sum, and deleting tasks from a task template, all reported on MaplePrimes. As always, thanks for the feedback!

We are happy to announce that we released MapleSim 2022 today.

The MapleSim 2022 family of products offers improvements in modeling and connectivity, including many that are in direct response to customer requests. Improvements include:

• Reduce diagram clutter by using “wireless” To-From blocks for a larger variety of signals
• Easily create, customize, and fine-tune control valves with new components and tools in the hydraulics library
• Expand modeling scope with improvements to several specialized libraries and toolboxes, including the MapleSim add-on products for Battery, Heat Transfer, and Web Handling
• New productivity and connectivity features in MapleSim Insight,  a standalone product in the MapleSim family that gives machine builders powerful simulation-based debugging and 3-D visualization capabilities that connect directly to your automation tools

See What’s New in MapleSim 2022 for more information about these and other improvements.

Hello Maple Learn enthusiasts, of all disciplines! Do any of you study Chemistry, or simply enjoy it? Well, you’re in luck. We’re released a new collection of documents in the document gallery, all focused on Chemistry. Remember, Maple Learn isn’t just for math fields. We also have documents on Biology, Physics, Finance, and much more!

First, we have our new gas laws documents. These documents focus on Boyle’s law, Charles’ law, Gay-Lussac’s law, and Avogadro’s law. We also have documents on the Combined Gas law and the Ideal Gas law. Many of these laws also have example questions to go along with them, for your studying needs.

We also have documents on molar and atomic mass. One example for atomic mass teaches you to use the proper formulas (No spoilers for the answer here, folks!) using the material Hafnium and its five isotopes. Don’t know the approximate masses of the isotopes without looking them up? No worries, I don’t either! It’s in the question text, as a hint.

Finally, let’s take a look at the dilution documents. We have documents discussing the calculations, and some examples. In this document, there are both an example walking you through the steps, and a practice question for you to try yourself. Of course, the solution is included at the bottom of the document, but we encourage you to try the problem yourself first.

We hope you’re just as excited as us for the Chemistry collection! Like our other collections, the Chemistry collection is constantly being added to. If you have any ideas for future documents, or even just topics you’d like to see, let us know in the comments below.

Today is a very exciting day at Maplesoft! Yesterday, we released Sumzle on the Maple Calculator app. Of course, this might not mean anything to you yet, because, well, what is Sumzle? Don’t worry, we know you’re asking. So, without waiting any longer, let’s take a look.

Sumzle is a math game, inspired by the Wordle craze, where you attempt to guess an equation. Each guess:

• Must include an equal sign
• Must include up to two operators
• May include a blank column

Sumzle’s interface looks like this:

After each guess, the tile’s colors change to reflect how correct the guess was. Green means that the tile is in the right spot, yellow means the tile is in the equation but the wrong spot, and grey means that it is not in the equation. Let me show you the progression of a game, on the Fun difficulty.

Sumzle can be played once a day on the free tier. For unlimited games, you can subscribe to Maple Calculator Premium or ask your friends to challenge you!

Math games are for everyone, and Sumzle has three levels of difficulty. Are you interested in the history of Sumzle? I sure am!

Sumzle was originally designed by Marek Krzeminski, a MapleSim developer. He had called it Mathie and showed the game to his colleagues here at Maplesoft. Well, we loved it!

After a few months of discussion and development, we tweaked the game to create Sumzle. Honestly, the hardest part was naming the game! We had so many great suggestions, such as Mathstermind and Addle. Eventually, we put it to a vote, and Sumzle rose above the rest.

We hope you enjoy the game, because Math not only matters, but is fun. Don’t forget to update your Maple Calculator app in order to receive that game, as otherwise you won’t be able to find it. Next time you need a break, we challenge you to a game of Sumzle!

A user found that the behaviour of calling a command from a library with a long form command name which invoked another command from that library with the short form name was unexpected:

We suggested to either

[Edit May 13 after Acer's improvements]

A) import the package such that all short form names of commands from the package are available in the Maple session and use the short form of both commands:

Download scientificConstantsGetValueShortFormsWithPackage.mw

or

B) use long forms for both command names:

Download scientificConstantsGetValueLongFormLongForm.mw

or

C) to test that a long form command and a short form command work together, import the package for the short form command:

Download scientificConstantsGetValueLongFormWithPackage.mw

Further details can be found in the article ?UsingPackages

Have you ever wanted to create practice problems and quizzes that use buttons and other features to support a student making their way to an answer, such as the following?

• Is this a function?
• Total Mass practice quiz
• Vector Operations quiz
• Steps Document – Matrix Eigenvalues

Let’s take a look at how you can use Maple 2022 to create documents like these that can be deployed in Maple Learn. I know I’ve always wanted to learn, so let’s learn together. All examples have a document that you can use to follow along, found here, in Maple Cloud.  

The most important command you’ll want to take a look at is ShareCanvas. This command generates a Maple Learn document. Make sure to remember that command, instead of ShowCanvas, so that the end result gives you a link to a document instead of showing the results in Maple. You’ll also want to make sure you load the DocumentTools:-Canvas subpackage using with(DocumentTools:- Canvas).

If you take a look at our first example, below, the code may seem intimidating. However, let’s break it down, I promise it makes sense!

with(DocumentTools:-Canvas);
cv := NewCanvas([Text("Volume of Revolution", fontsize = 24), "This solid of revolution is created by rotating", f(x) = cos(x) + 1, Text("about the y=0 axis on the interval %1", 0 <= x and x <= 4*Pi), Plot3D("Student:-Calculus1:-VolumeOfRevolution(cos(x) + 1, x = 0 .. 4*Pi, output = plot, caption=``)")]);
ShareCanvas(cv);

The key command is Plot3D. This plots the desired graph and places it into a Maple Learn document. The code around it places text and a math group containing the equation being graphed. 

Let’s take a look at IntPractice now. The next example allows a student to practice evaluating an integral.

with(Grading):
IntPractice(Int(x*sin(x), x, 'output'='link'));

 This command allows you to enter an integral and the variable of integration, and then evaluates each step a student enters on their way to finding a result. The feedback given on every line is incredibly useful. Not only will it tell you if your steps are right, but will let you know if your last line is correct, i.e if the answer is correct.

Finally, let’s talk about SolvePractice.

with(Grading):
SolvePractice(2*x + 3 = 6*x - 9, 'output' = 'link');

This command takes an equation, and evaluates it for the specified variable. Like the IntPractice command, this command will check your steps and provide feedback. The image below shows how this command looks in Maple 2022.

These commands are the stepping stones for creating practice questions in Maple Learn. We can do so much more in Maple 2022 scripting than I realized, so let’s continue to learn together!

Some other examples of scripted documents in the Maple Learn Document Gallery are our steps documents, this document on the Four Color Visualization Theorem, and a color by numbers. As you can see, there’s a lot that can be done with Maple Scripting.

 Let us know in the comments if you’d like to see more on Maple 2022 scripting and Maple Learn.

MapleSim is a fantastic tool to model multi-domain physical systems at a level that was unthinkable not so long ago. This post is about a simple problem that can be solved by hand, but where I failed with MapleSim using online resources.

For some time, I have been looking for answers to two questions:

• How to control which variables (and parameters) are included in MapleSims equation exports? This question is crucial to derive forward and inverse kinematics.
• Can the Equation Extraction App (in principle) provide a similar set of equations than the Multibody Analysis App? This question is rather academic until multidomain exports are desired (which the Multibody Analysis can’t provide).

The attached model helped me to clarify a few things and discover a real hidden secret (at least it was for me). I hope it can help others.

The model is a rather simple 3DOF mechanism. The task was to get a set of equations to derive the two rotations and the one displacement of the mechanism as a function of x,y,z coordinates.

After watching videos and inspecting models from the model gallery on inverse kinematics, I placed motion drivers for the input variables, added sensors for the output variables and wrapped the mechanism into a subsystem. However, as explained in more detail in the attachment, the set of exported variables was incomplete in both apps (AEs exports in the Equation Extraction Export and Position Constraints in the Multibody Analysis Export). Furthermore, the number of extracted equations did not match the three degrees of freedom.

After numerous trials it turned out that in addition to the motion drivers and sensors, initial conditions (ICs) had to be set. This is the hidden secret.  The crucial initial conditions (detailed in the attachment) are not required to assemble and run the model. So, introducing them temporarily for equation extraction is not obvious and never came to my mind. Setting ICs is, if I am not completely mistaken, also not highlighted in the documentation. This little trick of additionally setting initial conditions answered the above questions positively (at least for this 3DOF mechanism). In fact, it worked so well that all other failed attempts of conditioning the model for equations extraction worked immediately:

• Immobilizing the assembly with a Fixed Frame (using parameters for the fixed frame position to represent input variables; the fixed frame can be inside or outside the subsystem model).
• Using one Prescribed Translation component Instead of 3 motion drivers
• Using variables to pass motion signals into the model subsystem instead of using signals and ports (using From variable and To Variable components)

These attempts underline the effort and the time spend to get the relevant equations for that simple problem. As it turned out, all approaches work but are not even required for the mechanism. The key to success was setting the ICs of the joints.  One can even strip the model down to its skeleton (removing all motion drivers and sensors as in the screen shot bellow) and still get the desired simple set of equations, provided the ICs are set.

It has to be noted, that the mechanically coupled (highlighted in yellow) prismatic joints contributed to the problems: MapleSim does not seem to take this mechanical constraint into account (as I would have expected). The ICs of both coupled components must be set to get the three equations containing all desired in and output variables.

If my finding is correct and of general relevance, I like to suggest including such kind of tips and tricks in training or reference material.  From an application engineer or developers’ perspective, knowing the underlying algorithms, its probably obvious what has to be done. But from a user’s perspective MaplsSim is a black box that works magically well in most cases. If it does not, trial and error is often the only alternative to make it work, because models are either too complex or too confidential to be shared with others.   

What I am addressing here is only the initial step of getting the desired equations. There is more to master. Save manipulation of equations too big to be inspected visually is also important. This has been well covered in several videos. Unfortunately, the quality of some of the footage does not allow to capture details of Maple commands. If possible, such material should be updated or replaced.

Overall, a collection of tips&tricks and dos&don’ts could establish some kind of best practice in deriving kinematics. If others would share their experience and findings, we all could save allot of time. A collection of valuable posts, questions, models, videos, and webinars could be a start. This collection not necessarily has to meet the high Maple standards of mathematical exactness and consistency. Engineers also accept pragmatic solutions to solve a problem.

If my findings are incorrect or you have better advise, please let us know.

MBA_and_equation_extraction.msim