Physics and Computation

By this point we have seen that Maxima’s built-in routines can be very helpful tools in solving physics problems. Users can expand Maxima’s usefulness by taking advantage of its programming capabilities. Although Maxima should not be viewed as a substitute for a full-featured programming language, it does have some basic programming features that allow users to write simple programs. This chapter introduces these basic programming features and shows how they can be used to solve problems in mathematics and physics.