About MATLAB ®

Chapter 1

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 Objectives
After studying this chapter you should be able
to:
 Understand what MATLAB is and why it is
widely used in engineering and science
 Understand the advantages and limitations
of the student edition of MATLAB
 Formulate problems by using a structured
problem-solving approach

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 What’s in this Chapter?
 What is MATLAB?
 Student Edition of MATLAB
 How is MATLAB used in industry?
 Problem Solving in Engineering and
Science

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 Section 1.1
What is MATLAB?
 MATLAB is one of a number of commercially
available, sophisticated mathematical
computation tools
 Others include
 Maple
 Mathematica
 MathCad

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 MATLAB excels at:
 Numerical calculations
 Especially involving matrices
 Graphics
 MATLAB stands for
Matrix Laboratory

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 Why MATLAB
 Easy to use
 Versatile
 Built in programming language
 Not a general purpose language like C++ or
Java

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 MATLAB was originally
written in Fortran, then
later rewritten in C

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 MATLAB 8
 MATLAB is updated regularly
 Versions that predate
MATLAB 5.5 are substantially different
 MATLAB 8 was introduced in late 2012, and
features a new interface

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 Release Numbers
 The Mathworks packages their software in
groups, called releases
 Release 2013a includes
 MATLAB 8.1
 Simulink
A number of specialized “toolboxes”

This book is based on Release 2013a

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 Releases
 New releases are issued twice a year in the
spring and in the fall

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 Section 1.2
Student Edition of MATLAB
 MATLAB comes in both a student and
professional edition
 Student editions are available for
 Windows Operating Systems
 Mac OS
 Linux

 The student edition typically lags the

professional edition by one release

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 The student edition of release
2013a includes
 Fullfeatured MATLAB 8.1
 Simulink
 Symbolic toolbox based on MuPad
 Limited number of other commonly used
toolboxes

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 The command prompt is the
biggest difference you’ll notice

>> is the command prompt for the

professional version

EDU>> is the command prompt for the

student version

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 Section 1.3
How is MATLAB used in Industry?

 Widespread, especially in the signal

processing field
 Tool of choice in Academia for most
engineering fields
 Some examples….

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 Electrical Engineering

These images were created to help visualize the

arrangements of electromagnetic fields in space and time.
Images created by Dr. James Nagel at the University of
Utah

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 Biomedical Engineering

These images were created from MRI scan data using MATLAB.
The actual data set is included with the standard MATLAB
installation, allowing you experiment with manipulating the data
yourself.

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 Fluid Dynamics

Results from a finite element analysis code were post

processed using MATLAB to create this image.

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 Section 1.4
Problem Solving in Engineering and
Science
1. State the Problem
2. Describe the input and output
3. Develop an algorithm
4. Solve the problem
5. Test the solution

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 State the Problem
 If you don’t have a clear understanding of the
problem, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to solve
it
 Drawing a picture often helps you understand
the system better

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 Describe the Input
and Output
 Be careful to include units
 Identify constants
 Label your sketch
 Group information into tables

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 Develop an Algorithm
 Identify
any equations relating the knowns and
unknowns
 Work through a simplified version of the
problem by hand or with a calculator
 Developing a flow chart is often useful for
complicated problems

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 Solve the problem
 Create a MATLAB solution
 Be generous with comments, so that others
can follow your work

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 Test the Solution
 Compare to the hand solution
 Do your answers make sense physically?
 Is your answer really what was asked for?
 Graphs are often useful ways to check your
calculations for reasonableness

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 If you use a consistent problem solving strategy
you increase the chance that your result is
correct

Here’s an example….

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 Example 1.1
 Albert Einstein
 E=mc2
 The sun is fueled by
the conversion of
matter to energy
 How much matter does
the sun consume every
day?

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 State the Problem
 Find the amount of matter necessary to
produce the amount of energy radiated by the
sun everyday

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 Describe the Input
and Output
 Input
 Rate of energy radiation
 E = 385*1024 Joules/second
 Speed of light
 c = 3.0*108 meters/second
 Output
 Mass in kilograms

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 Develop an Algorithm – Hand
Example
 The energy radiated in one day is:
J sec hours
385  10 24
 3600  24 * 1 day  3 . 33  10 31
J
sec hour day

 Rearrange E=mc2 and solve for m

 m=E/c2

3 . 33  10 31
J J
m  3 . 7  10 14

3 . 0  10 m / sec 
8 2
m 2 / sec 2

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 But the units are wrong!!
J
3.7 1 0 14
2 2
m / sec

1 J = 1 kg m2/sec2
2 2
kg m / sec
 3 . 7  10 14
2 2
 3 . 7  10 kg
14

m / sec

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 Develop a MATLAB Solution to
Solve the Problem
 We’llstart learning the details of how to
use MATLAB in the next chapter.
 However, you can see from the following
demonstration just how easy it is to use
the command window

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 Enter theyou
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result

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 Test your Solution
 Matches the hand solution
 Is it reasonable?
 Consider…
 Mass of the sun = 2*1020 kg
 How long would it take to consume all that mass?

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 time = (mass of the sun)/(rate of consumptio

2  10 30
kg year
time  *  1 . 5  10 13 years
3 . 7  10 14 kg / day 365 days

That’s 15 trillion years!!

Yes – this is a reasonable
result

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 Summary
 MATLAB is widely used
 MATLAB is easy to use
 A systematic problem solving strategy makes it
more likely you’ve found the right answer

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