Wolfram Alpha For Electrical Engineers - A guide!
WolframAlpha is a freely available computational engine that can supplement already existing software such as mathematica, maple, mathlab, or excel. The purpose of this mini-guide is to go over some of its functionality with emphasis on electrical engineering.
Dimensional analysis:
WolframAlpha recognizes many common units. It will simplify dimensions and scale units. For example,
Code: farad * henry
will generate [time]^2
Code: 0.01 uF to pF
will generate 10,000 pF or 10 nF
WolframAlpha also can tap its database to pull up a conversion formula from the context
Code: convert 25 MHz to meters
will convert the frequency to wavelength 12 meters
Code: find energy in 100 uF at 10 KV
will give energy in a capacitor,
or to find inductance to resonate with 10 nF capacitor at 100 Khz; just say that
Code: find inductance for 10 nF at 100 KHz
output 253 nH
Also if you haven't memorized resistor color bands already, you can still look them up
Code: resistor yellow purple red
output: 4.7K
Dimensional analysis:
WolframAlpha recognizes many common units. It will simplify dimensions and scale units. For example,
Code: farad * henry
will generate [time]^2
Code: 0.01 uF to pF
will generate 10,000 pF or 10 nF
WolframAlpha also can tap its database to pull up a conversion formula from the context
Code: convert 25 MHz to meters
will convert the frequency to wavelength 12 meters
Code: find energy in 100 uF at 10 KV
will give energy in a capacitor,
or to find inductance to resonate with 10 nF capacitor at 100 Khz; just say that
Code: find inductance for 10 nF at 100 KHz
output 253 nH
Also if you haven't memorized resistor color bands already, you can still look them up
Code: resistor yellow purple red
output: 4.7K
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