Graphical and numerical approach with Octave to obtain the extremes in basic mechanical problems

Abstract

It shows how to visualize and obtain the absolute and relative extremes of problems arising from basic mechanics, using the Octave software. Once the physical problem has been modeled, the function of interest is plotted to identify values close to the different extremes, these identified values are entered into the supplied program which iteratively searches for the extreme. The program implements the Newton Raphson method, adapted to find the extremes. The objective is that the physics student has a computational help, with which he can visualize the behavior of the function that describes the physical problem and also can calculate the extremes of that function.