This one-semester course is designed for students who have taken basic Engineering Mathematics but are uncertain about how to deal with the apparently tedious mathematical calculations steps often needed to handle true engineering problems using pencil and paper without making mistakes. To fully utilize the computation power available on one’s personal computer nowadays, Computer Algebra System (CAS) also known as Symbolic Computation will be introduced in this course to help the students see first hand on the interactions which exists in mathematics, physics, engineering, etc. In addition, the advanced portion of each section extends Engineering Mathematics to mathematics of a graduate level. Undergraduate students who are interested in getting a glimpse of how to handle more advanced mathematical calculations are strongly encouraged to explore that part of the lecture notes.
The CAS program utilized in this course is a freeware called Maxima. This program is a free computer algebra system based on a 1982 version of MACSYMA, which was developed by MIT Lincoln lab for a long period time. This program is compatible with many operating system that include Windows, Linux, and MacOS. Students who are to take this course can download this program from: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4933 in order to practice the operation and to do the homework.
It should be noted that this course is not a computer language course. It is really a revisit of the Engineering Mathematics by using the Computer Algebra System to facilitate the students gain more insights in Engineering Mathematics/Applied Mathematics. Since there is no standard text book available with the course goal mentioned above, the lecturers and teaching assistants have put their efforts together to write a full lecture notes for this course.