PlanetPTC Virtual - Mathcad Challenge

[DanMarotta]

On September 8th, 2010, hear about the Mathcad Technology Vision and Strategy as well as Product Update and Roadmap, including the upcoming release of Mathcad PrimΣ 1.0 without leaving your desk.This is an exclusive, complimentary, online virtual event.

Here are few highlights:

• 2 sessions and demos presented by Mark A. Walker, Director of Product Management, Mathcad and Jakov Kucan, Director Software Development, Mathcad
• A session featuring one of our customers who is using Mathcad as a standard tool in their product development process
• A session from Knovel – one of our key partners
• PTC and partner booths in the exhibition hall
• Discussion forums with Mathcad product experts

At the conclusion of each of the four conference sessions, the presenter will provide a clue to the audience. Collect all four clues, answer the problem statement below using Mathcad and upload (attach) your worksheet by replying to this thread.

The first correct solution* will win a $500 AMEX gift certificate!

Registration for the event is still open. For additional details about the agenda, the exhibition hall and our partners, visit the event website or contact us at -.

*The winner will be chosen based on time of response, accuracy of solution, and best use of Mathcad to derive the answer. The deadline for submission is Monday, Sept 13 at 11:59PM EST. All members must have a completed PlanetPTC Community profile to be eligible to win. Completed profile is defined as filled out Expertise, Fun Fact, Personal Interests, Tags and a selected Avatar

[DanMarotta]

The Challenge Problem Statement <click image to enlarge>

The first 25 runner ups will receive a community t-shirt for participating. Sizes are subject to availability.

For complete contest rules, please click here

[TomMacMillan]

Is the challenge still open?

[DanMarotta]

The Mathcad Challenge is closed. The winner is Chris Kaswer.

Congratulations to Chris for his creative use of Mathcad to solve the Mathcad Challenge. He will receive a $500 America Express gift card.

Thank you all for participating. I will be getting in touch with everyone that submitted an entry for their respective mailing addresses.

I hope you had fun and looking forward to running more challenges in the near future.

-Dan

[jeanGiraud]

>I hope you had fun and looking forward to running more challenges in the near future.[Dan]<

________________________

Just normal satisfaction doctoring the patient for free !

[AlvaroDíaz]

BostonDan wrote:

The Mathcad Challenge is closed. The winner is Chris Kaswer.

Congratulations to Chris for his creative use of Mathcad to solve the Mathcad Challenge. He will receive a $500 America Express gift card.

Thank you all for participating. I will be getting in touch with everyone that submitted an entry for their respective mailing addresses.

I hope you had fun and looking forward to running more challenges in the near future.

-Dan

If the proposed solution is http://communities.ptc.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/151862-21189/Mathcad%20Challenge.xmcd.zip there are a few issue. Copy and paste procedure usually introduce this kind of problems. The solution discarded must to be t = -2.019s (and not a positive time, like the one that figure in the worksheet) because the ball can't makes contact with the ground before it is shutted. There are not physicall reason to discard the positive value t = 2.019s, and thus the problem with the numbers showing int this file have two possible solutions.

Regards. Alvaro.

[jeanGiraud]

Smart Alvaro !

I gave a lot more general project in the thread "Cannonball" Mathcad 11.2a. The contest was reserved to 14 and higher versions because it was passed in 14 [I believe]. Mark from PTC rejected my contest because my "religion" was like an heresy from what they expected. I couldn't make the moon square like Gallileo who couldn't make earth flat ! Yes, there are two possible angles for the same target point, but all that is very well tutored and exemplified . Oh ! I have plenty of T shirts. The "Cannonball runs probably finer in TI calculator than in Mathcad. I didn't look at what Dan expected.

Jean

[DanMarotta]

I consulted with the panel of judges and they unanimously agreed that Chris understood the objectives, attended the sessions, followed the guidelines of the challenge and communicated clearly.

[TomMacMillan]

Dan,

So what was it that made his answer better then mine, seeing as though I had submitted mine ten minutes before him?

[TomMacMillan]

Hello? Too embarrassed to answer?

[MarkA.Walker]

Hello all,

I didn’t know this debate was still alive, so hopefully I will settle the discussion, at least for a few minutes….

Jean Giraud’s answer did not involve any of the specific pieces of information that were disclosed through the presentations.

Beyond that, Tom MacMillan’s trajectory curve omitted the initial (launch) height of the cannonball. So, his trajectory curve was 75m below where it should have been

We clearly stated that the launch height was 75m above the crater floor…. Not that the crater floor was 75m below the launch height.

Therefore, Chris Kaswer’s answer, although received 10 minutes later, was correct because he included the +75m term in his vertical displacement calculation to drive the trajectory curve.

~Mark

[TomMacMillan]

Are you kidding me? Because I set my zero on the Y-axis at the cannon? You have nothing to indicate that on your diagram and during the presentation, I believe that it was announced that "h = 75m". Your diagram also shows a two ended arrow which indicates that h is only a scalar, does not have direction and does not indicate the y origin (by pointing away from it).

My solution was in ten minutes before Chris’.

After solving the equation for vertical motion (without setting it equal to some time variable), he copied both solutions. He incorrectly copied one solution and came up with 2.019s, which has now had no reason to be ignored.

He then cut and pasted again (to only three decimal points) one of the two times into a formula for horizontal displacement – not using mathcad’s ability to update if there were any changes before the point and rounding this time value off. He took the unneeded step of calculating and displaying the time until impact.

He then solved the vertical and horizontal components by plotting the two with discrete points at ½ second intervals, only up to slightly more than the time he calculated previously. He then plotted the two vectors (horizontal vs time and vertical vs time) against each other. This seems very sloppy, not robust, and doesn’t use mathcad’s ability to pass along and update information.

As for the horizontal distance, (Chris 2641m, Me 2609m), he used 1.6m/s^2 instead of the more accurate (from NASA) 1.62m/s^2 (see below).

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html

Keep your tshirt, not that you even offered to send me one!

[TomMacMillan]

Can someone confirm that aligning the trajectory with your arbitrary point trumps all of the points above?

I know that for any of the trajectories for any ammo manufacture/firearm model I have looked at, the trajectory isn't zeroed at ground level.

[TomMacMillan]

No response yet?

[MarkA.Walker]

Tom, others -

This was the decision several of us made at the time, over six months ago now. We're not going back at this point.

Thank you,

Mark

[DanMarotta]

Come join PlanetPTC Virtual – Mathcad event that is live until 4:00pm EST today. Meet our technical experts, visit partner booths, hear a customer-use case and download valuable resources. Registration is still open - http://bit.ly/Mathcad_VC

[jeanGiraud]

Dan,

I have done and tutored it in about 2 days. All done in the Mathcad forum under: "Cannonball" attached again. What's missing is the statistical analysis of the cannon accuracy. No problem, easy to imagine a ring of random shots and calculate the X, Y deviation for the "cannoner" to adjust . I may complete and post an update. Please, don't hesitate to post more questions about this project.

Cheers, Jean

[TomMacMillan]

Done!

[jeanGiraud]

Tom, Chris,

I might have committed the enormous mistake that the "Cannonball" project was for *.xmcd and not for *.mcd . Were there other restrictions ?

[TomMacMillan]

I don't think that was a restriction, but it was my understanding that we would get the information (g, h, v0, theta) from the sessions. You posted your answer before the last piece of info was released and didn't use any of them.

[jeanGiraud]

Tom MacMillan wrote:

I don't think that was a restriction, but it was my understanding that we would get the information (g, h, v0, theta) from the sessions. You posted your answer before the last piece of info was released and didn't use any of them.

Tom,

This type of info is not needed to generalise the project.

I started the project where the wheel is already invented,

and for what it matters vs using the Mathcad.

Cheers

[jeanGiraud]

jean Giraud wrote:

Tom MacMillan wrote:

I don't think that was a restriction, but it was my understanding that we would get the information (g, h, v0, theta) from the sessions. You posted your answer before the last piece of info was released and didn't use any of them.

Tom,

This type of info is not needed for generalising the project.

I started the project where the wheel is already invented,

and for what it matters vs using the Mathcad.

Cheers

The two restrictions are:

1. PPV ....xmcd excludes Mathcad 11 and lower versions !!!

2. PPV .... PDF does not open !!!

[TomMacMillan]

I agree that the information is not needed to lay out the solution, but the challenge was to collect the information and use it to plot the tragectory and find x.

There was no new information in either the .xmcd of .pdf files posted, and they did not say that it had to be in the .xmcd format.

[jeanGiraud]

Tom MacMillan wrote:

I agree that the information is not needed to lay out the solution, but the challenge was to collect the information and use it to plot the tragectory and find x.

There was no new information in either the .xmcd of .pdf files posted, and they did not say that it had to be in the .xmcd format.

Tom,

I have done the 3 ways:

1. no resistance

2. Stokes

3. Newton

Was it enough in your opinion ?

4. the cubic resistance = didn't do

because the cannon is shown shooting

in air rather than a torpedo.

>There was no new information in either the .xmcd of .pdf files posted<

Answer: monkey don't see, monkey don't do [jmG]

[ChrisKaswer]

Jean,

The whole idea of the contest was to create a Mathcad file to solve the problem using very specific intital conditions. Your Mathcad file was submitted before the last of 4 "clues", or initial conditions, were provided. Therefore, you cannot possibly have the correct answer. Your Mathcad file is a very complete and detailed analysis of this same general problem, but it did not use the input conditions that were asked for. Tom and I have results using the specific information provided at the end of each of the 4 presentations - that was the key.

[jeanGiraud]

Chris Kaswer wrote:

Jean,

The whole idea of the contest was to create a Mathcad file to solve the problem using very specific intital conditions. Your Mathcad file was submitted before the last of 4 "clues", or initial conditions, were provided. Therefore, you cannot possibly have the correct answer. Your Mathcad file is a very complete and detailed analysis of this same general problem, but it did not use the input conditions that were asked for. Tom and I have results using the specific information provided at the end of each of the 4 presentations - that was the key.

Chris,

If you have to "cannon" a fly in the grass, you better have a more generalised solution as well as if you want peddling your cannon. The key point to the project is the near impossibility to get an exact solution because to many minutes physical details would render the mathematical model near not realizable. There was not other informations than no information because there was no work sheet and no PDF, just the image. What Dan posted does not open as I have confirmed to Tom. This web community concerns only MathcadPTC, I'm MathcadMatsoft. Dan is at liberty to discriminate the MathcadMathsoft users, who cares !!! What is your next question ?

Cheers, Chris.

[MarkA.Walker]

Jean,

You presented a very nice use of Mathcad, no doubt. Unfortunately, your response doesn't utilize any of the parameters that we supplied during our sessions, so it must be disqualified. This was not an exercise of complex analysis, but one where users could give us a simplified answer using the exact details we provided, also to encourage participation. You didn't even need to attend the event in order to submit your response....

Again, it was a nice worksheet, but you missed the target in this case.

Thanks,

Mark

[jeanGiraud]

Mark,

You just drove your Porshe on the left and hit my truck on the right. I didn't post my "Cannonball" in your "Challenge" . I posted as a new sheet in "Usage" . It just happened that Dan was desperate that it was viewed by > 600 viewers and no work sheet, that's why I reposted in his new and recent Mathcad visit. You had no specifics about your proposal because Dan's *.PDF does not open and the *.xmcd is limited to MathcadPTC while I'm MathcadMathsoft and so does not open. I can see through minds and educative stuff for Engineers but not through walls. If you can plug your "specifics" in "Cannonball" and if it works ... great. If it does not work, send it back "Save as 11" , I will tutor from visual inspection but will not return a working work sheet because *.xmcd does crash *.mcd. A very malicious bug [in my own conclusion]. If you have explored "Cannonball", easy to figure that it will gladly fail on specifics out of physical meaning, therefore the converse of a proposition is the feasibility of the proposition and that's the real life of Scientists/Engineers. I have checked the TI_Inspire material and thus added as a double check source. BTW, the "Free fall" [a very similar project] has been exhausted in the former Akiva Mathcad collab and the work sheet(s) are available.

Cheers, Jean

[MarkA.Walker]

Hi Jean…

My mistake, I sure thought from your replies that you were posting an answer to the contest!

Anyway, thanks again for your efforts, and take care...

- Mark

[jeanGiraud]

Tom MacMillan wrote:

I don't think that was a restriction, but it was my understanding that we would get the information (g, h, v0, theta) from the sessions. You posted your answer before the last piece of info was released and didn't use any of them.

>You posted your answer before the last piece of info was released and didn't use any of them.<

________________________

What an argument for rejecting a more general answer !

The picture was damn enough to carry the project.