Wolfram Alpha For Electrical Engineers - A guide!

Ankita Katdare

Ankita Katdare

@abrakadabra Oct 26, 2024
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

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  • Ankita Katdare

    Ankita Katdare

    @abrakadabra Jun 4, 2012

    Complex numbers and phasors:

    Working in polar form is supported in W|A. By typing an impedance in rectangular form

    30 + 45i
    we are quickly given its magnitude and phase of 54, and 56 degrees

    and likewise, we can indicate a phasor in polar form with an exponential e

    e^(i pi)
    generates -1

    we can also manipulate phasors algebraically

    100 e^(i 45 deg) + 25 e^(i 30 deg)
    output: magnitude = 124, phase = 42 deg

    indicate degrees with “deg” otherwise W|A will interpret it in radians.