Maple Transactions has just published the Autumn 2024 issue at mapletransactions.org

From the header:

This Autumn Issue contains a "Puzzles" section, with some recherché questions, which we hope you will find to be fun to think about.  The Borwein integral (not the Borwein integral of XKCD fame, another one) set out in that section is, so far as we know, open: we "know" the value of the integral because how could the identity be true for thousands of digits but yet not be really true? Even if there is no proof.  But, Jon and Peter Borwein had this wonderful paper on Strange Series and High Precision Fraud showing examples of just that kind of trickery.  So, we don't know.  Maybe you will be the one to prove it! (Or prove it false.)

We also have some historical papers (one by a student, discussing the work of his great grandfather), and another paper describing what I think is a fun use of Maple not only to compute integrals (and to compute them very rapidly) but which actually required us to make an improvement to a well-known tool in asymptotic evaluation of integrals, namely Watson's Lemma, just to explain why Maple is so successful here.

Finally, we have an important paper on rational interpolation, which tells you how to deal well with interpolation points that are not so well distributed.

Enjoy the issue, and keep your contributions coming.

With the 2024 Maple Conference coming up this week, I imagine one of two of you have noticed something missing. We chose not to have a Conference Art Gallery this year, because we have been working to launch new section of MaplePrimes:  The MaplePrimes Art Gallery. This new section of MaplePrimes is designed for showing off your Maple related images, in a gallery format that puts the images up front, like Instagram but for Math.

To get the ball rolling on the gallery, I have populated it with many of the works from past years' Maple Art Galleries, so you can now browse them all in one place, and maybe give "Thumbs Ups" to art pieces that you felt should have won the coveted "People's Choice Award".

Once you are inspired by past entries, we welcome you to submit your new artwork!  Just like the conference galleries, we are looking for all sorts of mathematical art ranging from computer graphics and animations, to photos of needlework, geometrical sculptures, or almost anything!  Art Gallery posts are very similar to regular MaplePrimes posts except that you are asked to supply an Image File and a Caption that will displayed on the main Gallery Page, the post itself can include a longer description, Maple commands, additional images, and whatever else you like.  See for example this Art Gallery post describing Paul DeMarco's sculpture from the 2021 Maple Conference Gallery - it includes an embedded worksheet as well as additional images.

I can't wait to see what new works of art our MaplePrimes community creates!

This is an answer to the last question ASHAN recently asked.
As this answer goes beyond the simple example supplied by ASHAN in that it extends the possibilities of Statistics:-ColumnGraph, I thought it would be appropriate to share it with the entire community of Maple users.

Possible improvements:

• add controls for parameter types
• add consistency controls (numer of colors = number of data rows for instance)
• add some custom parameters
• improve legend position
   

Download CustomColumnGraph.mw

This post is about the visualization of a gyroscopic phenomenon of a rotating body. MapleSim models and a description for those who do not have MapleSim are provided for their own analysis. Implementation with other tools like Maple might give further insight into the phenomenon.

With appropriate initial conditions, a ball thrown into a tube can pop out of the tube. This can be reproduced with a MapleSim model

Throwing_a_ball_into_a_tube_A.msim

To hit a perfect shot without trial and error, time reversal was applied for the model (reversed calculation results of a ball exiting the tube are used as initial conditions for the shot). This worked straight away and shows that this model is sufficiently conservative.

This phenomenon has recently attracted attention on YouTube. For example, Steve Mold demonstrates the effect and provides an intuitive explanation which he considers incomplete because the resulting vertical oscillation of the ball does not match theory and his experiments. He suspects that the assumption of a constant axis of rotation of the ball is responsible for this discrepancy.

However, he cannot demonstrate a change of the axis of rotation. In general, the visualization of the rotation axis of a ball is difficult to achieve in an experiment. On the contrary, visualization is much easier in a simulation experiment with this model:

Throwing_a_ball_into_a_tube_B.msim

The following can be observed for a trajectroy that does not exit the tube:

At the apex (the top) of the trajectory, the vector of rotation (red bold in the following images) points downwards and is essentially parallel to the axis of the cylinder. The graph to the left shows the vertical (in green) position and one horizontal position (in red). The model applies gravity in negative y direction.

On the way down, the axis of rotation points away from the direction of travel (the ball orbits counterclockwise in the top view).

At the bottom, the vector of rotation points towards the axis of the cylinder.

On the way up, the axis of rotation points in the direction of travel.

These observations confirm that the assumption of a constant axis of rotation is too simplified. Effectively the ball performs a precession movement know from gyroscopes. More specifically, the precession movement of the rotation axis rotates in the opposite direction of the rotation of the ball.

However, the knowledge and the visualization of this precession movement do not provide more insight for a better intuitive explanation of the effect. As the ball acts like a gyroscope, a second attempt is to visualize forces that perturb the motion of the ball. Besides gravity, there are contact forces exerted by the tube. The normal force at the contact as well as the gravitational force cannot generate a perturbing momentum since they point to the center of the ball. Only frictional forces at the contact can cause a perturbing momentum.

Contrary to the visualization of the axis of rotation, visualization of contact forces is not straight forward in MapleSim, because neither the contact point nor the contact forces are directly provided by components of the MapleSim library. Only for a single contact point, a work-around is possible by measuring the reactive forces on the tube and then displaying these forces in a moving reference frame at the contact point. The location and the orientation of this frame are calculated with built-in mathematical components. To illustrate the additional effort, the image below highlights in yellow the components only needed for the visualization of the above images, all other components were required to visualize the contact forces and frictional moments.

Throwing_a_ball_into_a_tube_C3.msim
It required many attempts to get to a working model. Several kinematic models for a rotating reference frame at the contact point failed. Finally, mathematical operations on kinematic signals (measured by sensors) and motion drivers were successful.  

In the following, the model is used to visualize the right-hand rule for the following vectors:

• in green the disturbing frictional moment
• in red (now with a double headed arrow) the angular velocity (for a sphere it points in the same direction as the vector of the angular momentum and the axis of rotation)
• in pink the vector of the angular velocity of the precession movement

At the top, the vector of precession indicates that the axis of rotation is diverted away from the direction of travel (i.e. pointing backwards). This is in line with the above image of the ball “on the way down”.

At the bottom, the vector of precession indicates also that the axis of rotation is diverted away from the direction of travel. This however cannot be seen in the above image of the ball “on the way up”. This discrepancy is an indication that the vector of angular velocity of the precession movement might not sufficiently predict the future orientation of the axis of rotation.

Overall, there is little symmetry in the two extreme positions at the top and at the bottom. A bending of the trajectory downwards (pitching down) at the top indicated by the vector of precession, cannot be seen at the bottom: The vector of precession does not indicate a bending of the trajectory in an upward direction.

It turns out that the right-hand rule does not provide the hoped-for better explanation either. However, the model was not a complete waste of time since it provided two unexpected and very counterintuitive observations:

• At the bottom, the speed of the balls center is the lowest. For an object descending in a gravitational field, one would expect a gain in speed. A closer look at the graph of the angular velocity (lower graph) reveals that the ball is spinning at the highest rate at the bottom. This means that potential and kinetic energy at the top are converted to rotational energy at the bottom.
• Although the ball slows down (and speeds up in angular velocity) while descending there is no frictional force component in circumferential direction. Seen from above, the ball orbits at constant velocity. Only a vertical frictional force component acts all the time. Frictional forces in circumferential direction slowing down the ball can only be seen at the beginning of the simulation when the ball slips on the tube up to the moment when it rolls without slippage.

Overall, the closer one looks, the less intuitive it gets. What makes this phenomenon so difficult to understand is the constantly changing constraint of the ball. At each time increment the location and orientation of the contact changes with respect to the direction of the (instantaneous) direction of precession. This makes the phenomenon so obscure. It might be easier to find an “intuitive” explanation for the tennis racket paradox (or intermediate axis theorem) where no external forces act.

Even with a physics background and the right-hand rule of precession at hand, it requires allot of imagination to predict the movement of the ball. This is, in my opinion, not intuitive at all for most people. After all, the premotor cortex of the human brain seems to have constant difficulties to learn precession – for sure precession prediction is not hardwired. If it was, the paradox wasn’t so perplexing, and we could imagine/predict what the golf ball does next.

In summary, this simulation experiment revealed details not known before (at least to me) about the phenomenon. The experiment did not provide more insight for a better intuitive explanation but on the contrary raised more questions. It is another case of “knowing more, but not getting smarter”.

At the very least, the simulations also show the benefits of carrying out virtual experiments under various conditions that are difficult or even impossible in an experiment. In any case, such experiments are of educational value  - not only in classical physics.

Comments on the product:

It was possible to verify results of MapleSim: The model reproduces the magic numbers sqrt(7/2) and sqrt(5/2) for the ratios of circular rotation and vertical oscillation frequencies for a full and a hollow sphere respectively. See the first model.

The (laborious) work-around presented here cannot be applied to most real-world contact problems. Visualization of the contact point, contact forces and contact slippage are therefore a desirable extension to MapleSim’s contact capabilities. I do not think that this is provided by other tools.

A surface pattern for the ball would have been helpful to better visualize the rotation of the ball.

A moving observer view (in this case an observer in the reference frame of the contact) could facilitate observation.

Further viewing:

• The physical engine of Blender was used in a video to reproduce the phenomenon qualitatively.
• There is an ”improved” intuitive explanation of Steve Mold’s explanation which uses frictional forces and provides physical background. It is not clear to me which part of the visualization is animated and which is physically simulated. At least some sequences do not make sense: The vector of the external frictional moment on the ball suddenly changes direction. The “improved” intuitive explanation also states that the rotational axis leans constantly toward the contact point. I do not see this in my simulation (the contact point is indicated with a red dot in the images above). Also, the precession vectors in my simulation did not reveal an intuitive explanation for a reduction in vertical oscillation frequency.

Further work:

• Is the vertical oscillation truly sinusoidal as the horizontals are?
• Is the point of contact always in the northern hemisphere of the ball? More general: In one hemisphere?
• In a simulation without gravity: Does the vector of precession better predict the trajectory?
• ...
   

Here is a procedure I wrote to apply a greek prefix to a value so that the coefficient lies between 1 and 1000.

 

applyGreekPrefix := proc(x)
	description
		"Accepts a number, and if it has units, a Greek prefix is added so that the coefficient is between 1 and 1000",
		"Values without units or a unit of muliple units are returned as-is"
	;
	local prefixes, powers, value, unit, exponent, new_value, idx, prefix, strUnit, new_unit, i, SIx, returnval;
	
	if Units:-Split(x)[2] = 1 or numelems(indets(op(2, x), 'name')) > 1 then	
		# Value has no units or consists of multiple units
		returnval := x;
	else
		# Define the SI prefixes and their corresponding powers of 10
		prefixes := ["q", "r", "y", "z", "a", "f", "p", "n", "μ", "m", "", "k", "M", "G", "T", "P", "E", "Z", "Y", "R", "Q"];
		powers := [seq(i, i = -30 .. 30, 3)];
		
		# Convert to SI unit w/o prefix
		SIx := convert(x, 'system', 'SI');		
		# Separate the value and the unit
		value := evalf(op(1, SIx));
		unit := op(2, SIx);
		strUnit := convert(unit, string);  # Convert the unit to a string representation
		
		# Calculate the exponent of 10 for the value
		exponent := floor(log10(abs(value)));
		
		# Find the closest power of 10 that makes the coefficient between 1 and 1000
		idx := 0;
		for i from 1 to nops(powers) do
		   if exponent >= powers[i] then
		       idx := i;
		   end if;
		end do;
		
		# Adjust the value based on the selected prefix
		new_value := value / 10^powers[idx];
		prefix := prefixes[idx];
		# Construct the new unit using Units:-Unit if a prefix is needed
		if prefix = "" then
		   new_unit := unit; # No prefix needed, use the original unit
		else
		   new_unit := parse(StringTools:-Substitute(strUnit, "Units:-Unit(", cat("Units:-Unit(", prefix))); # Construct a new unit with the prefix
		end if;
		
		# Return the adjusted value with the new unit
		returnval := new_value * new_unit;
	end if;	
	return returnval;
end proc:
list_tests:=[0.0001*Unit('kV'), 10000*Unit('V'), 10*Unit('V'/'us'), 12334];
for test in list_tests do
	print (test, "becomes", applyGreekPrefix(test));
end do;

The complete Maple Conference 2024 program is now available online. You can view it HERE.
Thank you to all those who voted for the "Audience Choice" sessions. The winning topics are listed in the program.

Registration is still open and free of charge.  

We hope to see you there!

Just finished an exciting lecture for undergraduate students on Euler methods for solving ordinary differential equations (ODEs)! 📝 We explored the Euler method and the Improved Euler method (a.k.a. Heun's method) and discussed how these fundamental techniques work for approximating solutions to ODEs.

To make things practical and hands-on, I demonstrated how to implement both methods using Maple—a fantastic tool for experimenting with numerical methods. Seeing these concepts come to life with visualizations helps understand the pros and cons of each method.

The Euler method is the simplest numerical approach, where we approximate the solution by stepping along the slope given by the ODE. But there's a catch: using a large step size can lead to large errors that accumulate quickly, causing significant deviation from the real solution.

Plot Results:

• With a larger step size (h=0.5h = 0.5h=0.5), the solution tends to drift away significantly from the actual curve.
• Reducing the step size improves accuracy, but it also means more steps and more computation.

Next, we discussed the Improved Euler method, which is like Euler's smarter sibling. Instead of blindly following the initial slope, it:

1. Estimates the slope at the start.
2. Uses that slope to predict an intermediate value.
3. Then, it takes another slope at the intermediate point.
4. Averages these two slopes for a better approximation.

This technique makes a big difference in accuracy and stability, especially with larger step sizes.

Plot Results:

• Using the Improved Euler method, we found that even with a larger step size, the solution is smoother and closer to the true path.
• The average slope helps mitigate the inaccuracies that arise from only using the beginning point's derivative, effectively reducing the local error.

• The standard Euler method can produce solutions that oscillate or diverge, especially for larger step sizes.
• The Improved Euler method follows the actual trend of the solution more faithfully, even with fewer steps. This makes it a more efficient choice for balancing computational effort and accuracy.

• The Euler method is great for its simplicity but often requires very small step sizes to be accurate, leading to more computational effort.
• The Improved Euler method—which we implemented and visualized on Maple—proved to be more reliable and accurate, especially for larger step sizes.

It was amazing to see the students engage with these foundational methods, and implementing them on Maple brought a deeper understanding of numerical analysis and the challenges of solving differential equations.

Download Diff_equations.mw

This is a task from one forum:  “Let's mark an arbitrary point on the circle. Let's draw a segment from this point, perpendicular to the diameter, and draw a circle, the center of which is at this point, and the radius is equal to this segment. Let's mark the intersection point of the segment connecting the intersection points of the circles with the perpendicular segment. Prove that the locus of all such points is an ellipse.”
I wanted to get a picture of a numerically animated "proof" using Maple tools.
МАTH_HЕLP_PLANET.mw
 And in fact, it turned out that AB=2AC, or AC=BC.

Source codes (seen in the pdf file) for the paper "Maximal Gap Among Integers Having a Common Divisor with an Odd Semi-prime".

MaxGapTheorem2.pdf

The flag of Germany on the strip of the German mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius. Basically, it's just one way to represent flags of a certain type. It seemed that the flag looked good on the Mobius strip.
FLAG.mw

Hello!

I present a simple work-up of rolling a plane curve along a fixed plane curve in 2d space. Maple sources are attached.

Kind regards!

Source.zip

Today in class, we presented an exercise based on the paper titled "Analysis of regular and chaotic dynamics in a stochastic eco-epidemiological model" by Bashkirtseva, Ryashko, and Ryazanova (2020). In this exercise, we kept all parameters of the model the same as in the paper, but we varied the parameter β, which represents the rate of infection spread. The goal was to observe how changes in β impact the system's dynamics, particularly focusing on the transition between regular and chaotic behavior.

Download math_model_eco-epidemiology.mw

This is another attempt to tell about one way to solve the problem of inverse kinematics of a manipulator.  
We have a flat three-link manipulator. Its movement is determined by changing three angles - these are three control parameters. 1. the first link rotates around the black fixed point, 2. the second link rotates around the extreme movable point of the first link, 3. the third link − around the last point of the second link. These movable points are red. (The order of the links is from thick to thin.) The working point is green. For example, we need it to move along a circle. But the manipulator has one extra mobility (degree of freedom), that is, the problem has an infinite number of solutions. We have the ability to remove this extra degree of freedom mathematically. And this can also be done in an infinite number of ways.
Let us give two examples where the same manipulator performs the same movement of the working point in different ways. In one case the last red point moves in a straight line, and in the other case it moves in an ellipse. The result is the same. In the corresponding program texts, the manipulator model is described by a system of nonlinear equations f1, f2, f3, f4, f5 relative to the coordinates of the ends of the links (very easy to understand). The specific additional connection that takes away one degree of freedom is highlighted in blue. Equation of a circle in red color.
1.mw

2.mw


And as an elective. The same circle was obtained using a spatial 3-link manipulator with 5 degrees of freedom. In the last text, blue and red colors perform the same functions as in the previous texts.
3.mw

 

VerifyTools is a package that has been available in Maple for roughly 24 years, but until now it has never been documented, as it was originally intended for internal use only. Documentation for it will be included in the next release of Maple. Here is a preview:

VerifyTools is similar to the TypeTools package. A type is essentially a predicate that a single expression can either satisfy or not. Analogously, a verification is a predicate that applies to a pair of expressions, comparing them. Just as types can be combined to produce compound types, verifications can also be combined to produce compund verifications. New types can be created, retrieved, queried, or deleted using the commands AddType, GetType (or GetTypes), Exists, and RemoveType, respectively. Similarly in the VerifyTools package we can create, retrieve, query or delete verifications using AddVerification, GetVerification (or GetVerifications), Exists, and RemoveVerification.

The package command VerifyTools:-Verify is also available as the top-level Maple command verify which should already be familiar to expert Maple users. Similarly, the command VerifyTools:-IsVerification is also available as a type, that is,

VerifyTools:-IsVerification(ver);

will return the same as

type(ver, 'verification');

The following examples show what can be done with these commands. Note that in each example where the Verify command is used, it is equivalent to the top-level Maple command verify. (Also note that VerifyTools commands shown below will be slightly different compared to the Maple2024 version):

Download VerificationTools_blogpost.mw

Austin Roche
Software Architect
Mathematical Software
Maplesoft

Circles inscribed between curves can be specified by a system of equations relative to the coordinates of the center of the circle and the coordinates of the tangent points. Such a system can have 5 or 6 equations and 6 variables, which are mentioned above.
In the case of 5 equations, we can immediately obtain an infinite set of solutions by selecting the ones we need from it. 
(See the attached text for more details.)
The 1st equation is responsible for the belonging of the point of tangency to one of the curves.
The 2nd equation is responsible for the belonging of the point of tangency to another curve.
In the 3rd equation, the points of tangency on the curves belong to the inscribed circle.
In the 4th and 5th equations, the condition is satisfied that the tangents to the curves are perpendicular to the radii of the circle at the points of contact.
The 6th equation serves either to find a specific inscribed circle or to find an infinite set of solutions. It is selected based on the type of curves and their mutual arrangement.

In this example, we search for a subset of the solution set using the Draghilev method by solving the first five equations of the system: we inscribe circles in two "angles" formed by the intersection of the exponent and the ellipse.
The text of this example, its solution in the form of a picture,"big" option and pictures of similar examples.
INSCRIBED_CIRCLES.mw


 

Addition 09/01/24, 
One curve for the first two equations in coordinates x1,x2 and x3,x4
f1:= x1^2 - 2.5*x1*x2 + 3*x2^2 - 1;
f2:= x3^2 - 2.5*x3*x4 + 3*x4^2 - 1;