Registration for Maple Conference 2022 is now open! Please go to our conference home page and click on the "Register Now" button.

A tentative schedule has also been posted on the conference agenda page.

The call for participation has closed but please keep in mind that you still have until September 22 to submit creative works.

We hope to see you at the conference!

Have you ever heard of a matrix kernel or nullspace? If not, or you’d like a refresher on the topic, keep reading! We’re doing a Maple Learn document walkthrough today on Fundamental Subspaces.

The document starts by defining the nullspace/kernel and nullity of a matrix. Nullity is defined as the number of vectors in the basis of the kernel for the given matrix. This makes sense, as nullspace is defined as:

This may still not make sense to you, and that’s okay! We have an example for a reason, where we try to find a basis for Null(A) and state the dimension of the subspace (nullity).

I won’t go through the solution here, as trying it yourself is always important. But one hint! If you get really stuck, you can find the Reduced Row Echelon Form (RREF) and the kernel using Maple Learn’s context panel, or check out the rest of our Matrices collection for other helpful documents on this topic.

Please let us know what you thought of this walkthrough or if there are any specific documents or topics you’d like to see in the comments below this post. I hope you enjoyed this walkthrough!

We’ve decided to start a new series of blog posts, where we take a closer look at the collections available in Maple Learn. What collection are we looking at first, you ask? Our largest, the Calculus collection! This collection has around 250 documents, and was one of the first to be added to the Maple Learn document gallery.

Because it’s so big, we can’t talk about it all in one post. Instead, we’re going to break it up into three posts: Limits (this one!), Derivatives, and Integration. Keep an eye out for those other ones!

Let’s dive into it. If you’re learning limits for the first time, the first document you’ll want to take a look at is our document on the formal definition of limits.

And of course, just as the document title says, we start with the formal definition of a limit:

From there, like many of our other documents, there’s a visualization to the left, and an explanation to the right. Seems fairly simple, right?

Well, what if you wanted to dig further into the topic?

That’s what the rest of this collection is for! We have documents on many topics relating to limits, such as The Squeeze Theorem, or The Fundamental Trig Limit (don’t forget to use the slider!). We also have a steps document, to help you solve any limits problems you’ve created or found.

We can’t wait to see you another time for when we dive into Derivative documents. Let us know if after the Calculus collection showcase, if you have another collection you’d like to see summarized!

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

Highlights of the 2021 Maple Conference are now available. These include recordings of the keynote presentations, contributed sessions, and discussion panels, as well as the Art Gallery entries.

We encourage you to submit a presentation proposal or artwork to our 2022 Maple Conference by visiting the links below!
Call for Participation (proposals due July 18)
Call for Creative Works (submissions due September 22)

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

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

It’s been a hot week at the Maplesoft office, but we’re back with another fun example! In school, you probably learned how to calculate volume of simple shapes: Cubes, prisms, things like that. However, something I never understood was complex shapes. I struggled to separate it into smaller shapes, plus I had trouble understanding ratios!

Thankfully, Maple Learn has documents on almost anything. I love looking through them when making these posts, just to see what more I can learn. In this case, I found a really interesting example on Changing Dimensions and Effects on Volume, which taught me a lot. Let’s take a look at it, and hopefully it will help you too!

The document begins with a statement, saying “For a 3D object, if one or more dimensions (length, width, height) are changed, then the volume of the object is scaled by a factor equal to the product of all scale factors of changed dimensions”. If you’re not a math person, like me, this statement can be quite confusing at first glance. Let’s break it down.

The first part of the statement is easy to understand. We know what a 3D object is, and we know what dimensions changing means. We also know what the volume of an object is, as a concept. However, what is all this about scale factors?

Looking at the example, it starts to make a lot more sense. The solid has dimensions of 4x10x6. To find the scale factor, we first need to decide on an “original” solid. In this case, a 2x2x2 cube. The number of those cubes is found by dividing each dimension of the full shape by the dimensions of the original shape. This gives us 30. That means the new solid is 30 times larger than the cubes.

From there, the document has a fun, interactive example that lets you play around with sliders.

When you change a, b, and c you are changing the scale factors. This lets you see the final volume, and how it changes with those factors.

We hope this example helped you understand a concept you may have never been directly taught, as I know it helped me! Let us know if you’d like to see any more example walkthroughs.

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 are holding another Maple Conference this year, and I am pleased to announce that we have just opened the Call for Participation!

This year’s conference will be held Nov. 2 – Nov. 3, 2022. It will be a free virtual event again this year, and it will be an excellent opportunity to meet other members of the Maple community and share your work.

We are inviting submissions of presentation proposals on a range of topics related to Maple, including Maple in education, algorithms and software, and applications. We also encourage submission of proposals related to Maple Learn. This year, we are not requiring recorded videos, and we hope to see more interaction between presenters and audience members in our live sessions.

You can find more information about the themes of the conference and how to submit a presentation proposal at the Call for Participation page. Proposals are due July 18, 2022.

Presenters will have the option to submit papers and articles to a special Maple Conference issue of the Maple Transactions journal after the conference.

Registration for attending the conference will open in June. We will also be featuring an art gallery again at the conference. Watch for further announcements in the coming weeks.

I sincerely hope that all of you here in the Maple Primes community will consider joining us for this event, whether as a presenter or attendee!

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.

A user of ours came up with an interesting request: taking a procedure name as an argument and then within the procedure, return a set containing the names of all variables within the procedure. This task can be accomplished in one of two ways, one with local variables, one with global variables.

One method is:

find_vars_in_proc(f :: procedure, $)
  return {op(2, eval(f))};
end proc;

for variables that Maple unambiguously determines to be local variables. For global variables, a slight variation appears as:

find_vars_in_proc(f :: procedure, $)
  return {op(2, eval(f)), op(6, eval(f))};
end proc;

As always, typing ?procedure directly in the worksheet brings up the help guide containing more information on operands of a procedure!

Probability is a field of mathematics that sees extensive use outside of academics.  Whether one’s checking the likelihood of rain on a weather app or the odds of winning the lottery, probability is everywhere.  My favorite application of probability is dice games like Dungeons and Dragons.  The game can be played very simply (choose to attack a monster, roll a 20-sided-die, try to exceed a certain number) or with a complexity that rivals high school math courses.  There are spells and abilities that modify one’s dice rolls, such as adding additional rolls to the total or rerolling the die and using the higher result.  A good player regularly asks themself when to activate certain buffs and how likely they are to succeed with or without them.

All of these questions boil down to the basics of probability.  Things that one learns in an introductory statistics course extend into countless applications.  Currently, I’m adding some of that knowledge to the Maple Learn document gallery, and I’m here to give a sneak peek.

First, I’ve built tree diagrams in Maple Learn.  Tree diagrams are a way to map probability across multiple events occurring in sequence.  Each branching path represents a series of events that have a specified probability of occurring.

Here’s an example: one morning I flip a coin to decide if I buy a lottery ticket.  If it’s heads, I do.  If I buy the ticket, I have a one in a million chance of winning the cash prize.  Drawn as a tree diagram…

I drew this using Maple Learn line, point, and label operations.

My new D&D-themed documents are a bit more exciting.  In the first, we explore a tree diagram with variable probabilities.  A brave hero makes their way into a dungeon, attacking any random monster they see.  How likely are they to land an attack?  Adjust the details of the question and watch the diagram change.

In the second, I used Maple program scripting to add a live randomized dice roller.  Many probability techniques are at play to analyze which of two buffs will do more good for a dice-rolling adventurer.

I plan on making more documents like these; keep your eyes on the Document Gallery probability collection for updates.