Spreadsheet Solution of Partial Differential Equations

Abstract

This paper points out that a spreadsheet program on a home or personal computer permits the solution of partial differential equations in two independent variables with considerably less effort than conventional programming languages. The computational molecule approach is identified as a natural approach for using spreadsheets to solve elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic partial differential equations in rectangular, skew, and curvilinear coordinate systems. The technique is relatively independent of the type of spreadsheet or host computer employed, although the spreadsheet must allow forward or circular references for iteration. Each of the examples in the paper was run on a home computer with 48K RAM.