Student's Lab Assignments in PDE Course with MAPLE

Alhadi B
alhadi@makara.cso.ui.ac.id
Ponidi
Ponidi@makara.cso.ui.ac.id

Department of Mathematics
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science
University of Indonesia
Depok (16424)
Indonesia

Abstract

Recently, the computer-aided software has been used intensively in many courses in mathematics, especially in computational subject such as to solve initial value and boundary value problems in PDE. We have used many software packages in student's lab assignment, such as FORTRAN, PASCAL, MATLAB, MATHEMATICA, and MAPLE in order to accelerate their understanding in concept and to improve their computational skill. Regarding our last few years evaluations in our PDE course, we conclude that Maple is the most effective one in solving, comparing and visualization of numerical and exact solution in PDE. PDE is one of obliged course for Pure Mathematics and Computational Mathematics student.

In this paper, we will focus our discussion on computational project to solve, to compare and to visualize the solution of the heat, wave and Laplace's equation in PDE in our course class. We have arranged our course materials in effective ways by combining lecturing in class before midterm with lab assignment, discussion and final project after midterm. To make more effective and efficient class, we grouped the class and arranged the member of group by mixed-up them base on their major skill, theoretical (Pure Mathematics student) and computational (Computational Mathematics student).

As the result we found the increasing of academic atmosphere among the student. It can be detected with more enthusiastic and involving students in their group or individual assignments. Beside that, we see that MAPLE is comfortable and interesting to be used in our mathematics course, especially in PDE. The student also have new experienced and perception about modeling, solving methods, visualization, and real interpretation on PDE Problems.

? 1999. ATCM, Inc