Technology Metro

If you want to learn chemical engineering using an interactive environment, Octave is an open source software program you’d be interested in. It’s very user friendly and a student using it for the first time will shortly be comfortable with it. Octave uses a language similar to Matlab in order to facilitate experiments and computations. Those familiar with Fortran, C++, C and other similar languages will be comfortable customizing Octave.

This course package was designed for use in the classroom for chemical reactor design problems but not limited to it. It is also used in research, commercial applications and in teaching, allowing students to learn to solve realistic problems. Octave, being open source, adds functions to keep abreast of Matlab so that users will always have the latest downloads.

Octave can be run on almost any platform and its interpreter has DASSL and LSODE incorporated into it. You can use Octave for integer-valued matrices and scalars or solve nonlinear algebraic equations. It can integrate functions over infinite as well as finite equations. Octave’s interpreter can create 2 and 3 dimensional charts, graphs and plots that can be printed or saved for future use.

Octave shares many of Matlab’s features, as it was built to be a complement to it. They both have powerful math functions, built in support for complex numbers and very large function libraries. This open source application is user friendly and very good for teaching programming to those who haven’t had any courses in computer science engineering. Anyone wishing to use it can download Octave for free. It is an open source software so there is no charge attached for using Octave. The latest stable version of Octave is 3.0.3 which was released in October 10 2008.

If you have a question that’s not in the nearly 600 page manual, you can get support through the mailing list provided.

It all began with Microsoft Flight Simulator in 1983, software that allowed people to actually feel as if they were in the cockpit of an airplane, piloting it across hills and valleys, through clouds and blue skies. Now, with Flight Simulator X, Microsoft has once again topped itself. Sim X has busier, more challenging airports and new aircraft that you can fly all over a very, very realistic world.

Microsoft has outdone itself in giving the gamer an experience that feels like real life. While flying anything from jet liners to sailplanes, the user flies over a world of livestock, roads, schools, traffic, tundras and deserts. Where the first MS Flight Simulator was rather stark, this latest version has the user admiring whale pods and herds of gazelles, penguins and traffic jams as they maneuver in a very realistic and detailed pilot’s seat.

The new software lets several gamers fly together or separately from airports all over the globe. You can be an air traffic controller or talk to one as a pilot. Flight Simulator includes several different missions you can undertake such as a role in an air show or a drag race with other fliers. It has search and rescue missions as well as other favorite features from older editions, but updated and much more realistic.

Previous editions of Flight Sim required a joystick but it is now optional. You can use your keyboard, mouse or an Xbox controller to fly your aircraft. Many people like the game controller, as it feels a little more natural to them and provides better control of the aircraft.

Microsoft Flight Simulator has aircraft, cities, very detailed airports and nearly forty missions. The deluxe edition includes those features, too, but has a tower controller and a glass canopied cockpit if you want it. People interested can download a Flight Simulator trial version at no charge.
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