Departments of Civil Engineering and Mathematics
CE109: Computing for Engineering

Start-up sheet

Starting up Mathematica

To load Mathematica, select it via the Start menu, in the bottom left of the screen:

Start -> Programs -> Mathematica 3.0 -> Mathematica 3.0

A "shortcut" icon may also be present on left-hand side of the screen: you can double click on that to start Mathematica. A Mathematica menu bar should appear at the top of the screen, and a blank Mathematica window headed "Untitled-1", and usually a window containing buttons with mathematics-like symbols on them that you can use to input expressions. (If the palette does not appear, you can bring it up by selecting Palettes-> Basic Input from the File menu.)
  
In the first instance, begin typing in the "Untitled-1" window.

Getting help with Mathematica

The reference book for Mathematica is The Mathematica Book by Stephen Wolfram (N.B. it must be the third edition, previous editions describe old versions of the software). Copies of this may be found in the Civil Engineering and Central libraries. However, you have much more convenient access to the book, and other information, via Mathematica's Help menu. 

The Help system is divided into six sections ("Built-in  functions",  "Add-ons",  "The Mathematica book",  "Getting   Started/Demos", "Other Information" and "Master Index"). You can browse  through the different levels of these sections by clicking on one of the section buttons and tracking through the contents (for example, information on the command "Plot" is located at Built-in functions ->Graphics and Sound ->2D Plots). Or you can do a search by typing an expression into  the box next to the "Go To" button; "Master Index" is the most general search location. 

The online help pages are themselves Mathematica "notebook" documents, and you can copy-paste any part of them, e.g. example commands, into your own notebooks.

Saving your work

To keep notebooks, you may use your normal personal file space, which appears as
<username> on 'forth.cv.ic.ac.uk' (H:)
in file listings. Use Save or Save As… from the File menu. We have seen problems with Mathematica notebooks exceeding file space quotas; it is a good idea to remove unnecessary graphical images before saving.

About the Mathematica sessions

These sessions are prepared and supervised by the METRIC Project, based in  the Mathematics Department. We welcome your comments.

Phillip Kent and Phil Ramsden
The METRIC Project, 
Mathematics Department (Room 616, Huxley Building)
Email: metric-proj@ic.ac.uk	 
WWW: http://metric.ma.ic.ac.uk/civ-eng/