Teaching Electrical Engineering By Using Symbolic Computation

Abstract

In the past 40 years Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) has been used extensively in research and industrial applications. This growing use of "computer algebra" or "symbolic computation" makes it very attractive for employing in electrical engineering education. The objective of this paper is to draw the attention of broad engineering and educational circle to the enormous capabilities of symbolic computation to the teaching of electrical engineering. The role and the advantages of using of computer algebra systems in electrical education will be pointed out via a few significant examples. A brief description of computer algebra systems and the current status within electrical engineering education is given in this paper. There is authors' believe that will be an increase use of symbolic computation in higher education in the very near future, due to both computational and educational advantages. 1. Introduction. Computer tools to help professors and students alike in the teaching and learning processes have become very popular in the last two decades. Scores of articles and technical papers can be found in the technical and popular literature referring to different software and hardware tools and the techniques to use them in educational environments 2-6 , probably due to the incredible advances in software and hardware development, in the last two decades and their significant reduced costs. However the main use has been reported in numerical computation, simulation, and computer-aide design. Many authors have illustrated a wide range of applications in different areas, such as electrostatics, circuit analysis, electrical machine analysis and design, electromagnetics, etc. As long as computers were capable only working with numbers, their applications in engineering education was somewhat controversial. Many experts pointed out that the generality being lost if the information is represented in "discrete" forms, only. Anyway, for a student, numerical results may obscure the fact that they follow from a model, which is analytic in nature. Different and unique to their digital nature is using computers for symbolic analysis. In the past 40 years Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) has been used extensively in research and industrial applications. This growing use of "computer algebra" or "symbolic computation" makes it very attractive for employing in electrical engineering education.