(31a) Effective Low-Cost Numerical Problem Solving Software for ChE Education in Developing Countries

Engineering education increasingly involves problem solving that requires numerical solutions of complicated systems of equations and/or regressions/curve fitting of extensive data. Software required for these types of problems can be expensive for academic departments, and typically it can be very expensive for individual graduates when they start their professional careers.

Many developing engineering programs have limited resources to provide this type of software for their faculty and students, and the latest personal computers that enable this software problem solving are in limited supply.

A possible solution to this challenge in the advancement of global engineering education is to be enabled by philanthropic cooperation of the non-profit educational corporation with the name of Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering Education (the CACHE Corporation ? www.cache.org) and Polymath Software ? www.polymath-software.com. These two organizations have been providing low-cost site licenses of POLYMATH to mainly chemical engineering departments since 1990, with currently some 110 site licenses in use by universities world wide with most in the USA.

Proposed extension of these site licenses at no cost to interested departments in developing engineering programs will enable interaction numerical problem solving on a wide range of personal computers. These site licenses will allow free distribution of individual copies of the software to all students, faculty and staff. In addition, the software may be installed in engineering computer labs and laboratories.

POLYMATH enables the user to apply effective numerical analysis techniques during interactive problem solving on personal computers with Microsoft operation systems from Windows 95 through Vista. This software is extremely easy to use as there is no command language to remember. Results are presented in tabular or graphical formats for easy understanding and for incorporation into papers and reports. Capabilities now include a color-coded full-screen editor: Linear Equations, Nonlinear Equations, Differential Equations, Data Analysis and various types of Regression. The installation file is about 17 Mb and the installed code is 9 Mb.

Additionally, problems can be solved completely in POLYMATH and/or automatically exported to Excel for solution. (A working spreadsheet is generated.) A POLYMATH ODE_Solver Add-In is included for solving ordinary differential equations in Excel. Automatic export to Excel includes all intrinsic functions and logical variables. Users can also automatically generate MATLAB code for a complete POLYMATH problem. Code is ordered and includes conversion of all intrinsic functions and logical variables. Provided templates allow for easy generation of m-files ready for execution with MATLAB.