Matlab
There are three parts to this assignment:
1. There is a video for you to watch, and then a small activity.
Videos:
Activity (from Mathworks):
You are asked to complete Exercise 1 as practice, and then complete exercise 2 for this assignment. You will turn in
a word document with your work copy and pasted into the word document.
At its heart, MATLAB® is a big calculator. To calculate something simply type it in at the “command prompt” and
press Enter . Thus, to calculate 1 + 1 we type it in and press Enter . The screen should show:
>> 1+1
ans =
2
meaning that the answer is 2.
Exercise 1. Run MATLAB, find the command window and the blinking cursor. Find the answer to the
following arithmetic problems:
1234+4321=?
104−765=?
47∗33=?
344=? (The operator for “power” is the circumflex ^, usually found by pressing Shift ⇑ 6
How far is 192 from its approximation 2022 – 2 ∗ 20 (Remember that (a−b)2=a2−2ab+b2, thus the answer
should be ±1)
Find an approximation to 1/73
Find an approximation to √31 (while you can of course use the fact that √x = x0.5 , you can also “look
for” a dedicated function square root by learning how to use the lookfor command….)
If you get 5% interest-rate (yearly) on a loan, compounded monthly, and you start with $1000, how
much money will you have after 20 years? (don’t be confused by an answer of the form 2.7e3 which
simply means 2.7×103)
If two sides of a right triangle have lengths 31 and 45, what is the length of the hypotenuse? ( You
should get 54.6)
You may have noticed in the exercises that the answer is only given with 5 digits of accuracy (at most). For
example, we can ask MATLAB for the value of π and get:
>> pi
ans =
3.1416
Internally, MATLAB keeps a 16 (more-or-less) digit version of the number it shows us, but to keep things orderly, it
only displays the answer rounded to show 5 digits (by default). We can change this by issuing a command:
>> format long
>> pi
ans =
3.141592653589793
We can see this, by subtracting part of π from and, which always holds the full, unrounded answer to the previous,
unassigned expression:
>> format short
>> pi
ans =
3.1416
>> ans-3.1415
ans =
9.2654e-05
>> ans – 9.2653e-5
ans =
5.8979e-10
Exercise 2. Remember the cosine rule? C2=a2+b2−2abcos(θ). Find the length of the hypotenuse of a
triangle with angle 30ο, and sides with lengths 10 and 20. The MATLAB trigonometric functions (cos, sin,
tan) use radians, so you will need to convert using π.
For guided practice and further exploration of how to use the command prompt
c is your hypotenuse, and the sides are a and b.
Please copy and paste your answer in word – and send in via canvas.