The Computer Algebra System (CAS) MAXIMA

Installation

We recommend to use Maxima with its graphical interface wxMaxima.

Linux:

Maxima is part of all popular linux distributions, but usually not installed. To install maxima and the graphical user interface wxmaxima, use the graphical package manager of your distribution. For Debian based distributions one can also use the following shell commands as root or with sudo:

apt-get install maxima wxmaxima

You have to make sure to install both maxima and wxmaxima.

Windows and MacOS:

Download the appropriate version of wxMaxima from the Maxima developers side and follow the install guide. The package contains both maxima and wxMaxima.

Collection of some plotting routines

For our examples we have created a collection of special plotting routines, making plots a bit nicer. You have to download the following file:

Download Funktionenbibliothek für Maxima

You have to copy this file in a special directory:

Linux/MacOS:

/home/USERNAME/.maxima

Windows:

c:\Users\USERNAME\maxima

Then you can load it into a maxima notebook by the line

load(mathchem);

and executing it by pressing

CTRL + RETURN

or SHIFT + RETURN

First steps

Maxima is very extensive with its possibilities and functions. You can find several tutorials for beginners on the developers side .

Here are some things causing problems with simple solution:

make sure each execution line ends with a semicolon ";" or a dollar sign "$" (dollar sign suppresses output)
execution of a line is possible with "CTRL + RETURN" or "SHIFT + RETURN", press both buttons togehter. RETURN allone creates only a line break and can be used to make some structure.
Variables are assigned with a colon ":" and function with combination of colon and equal sign ":="