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Mathematica Lab Tutorials: Lab 11

Lab Questions

Consider the following BVP

    \[ 4y'' (x)-2y(x)-x=0 \]

With the boundary conditions y(0)=0 and y(6)=0

  • Find the exact solution using the built-in DSolve function in Mathematica.
  • Use the finite difference method with n=5 intervals to find a numerical solution.
  • Plot the exact solution overlapping the data points obtained using the numerical solution.
  • Find the maximum absolute error.
  • Write a procedure whose input is n and the output is the maximum absolute error.
  • Plot the curve of the maximum absolute error vs. n for n=4,5,6,7,8,\cdots,30
  • Plot the curve of the maximum absolute error vs. h=6/n for n=8,16,32,64,128,256
  • Fit the nonlinear model E=\beta h^2 to the data of maximum error vs. h (Note the error is expected to be E(h^2) because the basic formula for the centred finite difference scheme is used)

Video Tutorials

Tutorial 1

Finding exact solutions using DSolve function. A review of FullSimplify and Solve functions. Introducing the Symbol function.


Tutorial 2

Using the finite difference method to solve differential equations.



Tutorial 3

An example of finding the error in the finite difference method as a function of the number of intervals.



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