Preface

Excellent language for engineering computations

Because of its platform independence, Java provides an excellent programming language for engineering and scientific computational experiments, particularly where extreme execution speed is not a requirement.  Programs developed for such experiments on one platform can be successfully executed on a variety of platforms without the need to rewrite or recompile.

A large Math library

Furthermore, because if its inherent simplicity, and the availability of a large Math library, Java provides an excellent programming language for engineers and scientists who want to do their own programming, but who have no desire to become programming experts.  The code required to conduct an engineering or scientific computational experiment often consists of little more than the most rudimentary application of arithmetic in loops using data stored in arrays or read from disk files.

Now for the bad news

However, there is a downside to this happy story.  When doing this sort of work, it is often very important to see the results of the experiments in the form of graphs or plots.  Unfortunately, the programming required to produce graphical output from simple engineering and scientific computational experiments cannot be accomplished using rudimentary programming techniques.  Rather, to do that job right requires considerable expertise in Java programming.

A generalized plotting program

This lesson develops a generalized plotting program, which is easy to connect to other programs, (whether they are simple or complex), in order to display the output from those programs in two-dimensional Cartesian coordinates.  The plotting program is specifically designed to be useful to persons having very little knowledge of Java programming.

(Actually, the lesson develops two very similar plotting programs each designed to display the data in a different format.)

Viewing tip

You may find it useful to open another copy of this lesson in a separate browser window.  That will make it easier for you to scroll back and forth among the different listings and figures while you are reading about them.