Matlab Basics

1. The command diary file_name command saves all subsequent output to

file file_name
2. Creating and using variables
o Type in P=1<ENTER> n=1<ENTER> R=0.0821<ENTER> T=273<ENTER>
o Variable names are case sensitive (so T is not the same is t). Variable
names can include letters or numbers
o Other legal variable names would be Pressure, Vol, nMoles, Rvalue,
T1, ...
3. You can recall previous lines by using up-arrow key
4. Arithmetic Operations & Simple Calculations (+, -, *, /, ^)
o The volume can be determined by typing V= n*R*T/P
5. The role of the Semi-colon in Matlab
o Matlab will print out the answer for any command not terminated by a
semi-colon.
o Matlab will not print out the result if the line ends in a semi-colon
6. To find out help on a command (such as plot), type help plot (or use the
pulldown help menu)
7. To list all commands which have a keyword in their description (such as sin),
type lookfor sin
Lists & List Arithmetic
In addition to doing operations on single numbers, Matlab allows us to perform
operations on a list of numbers. These lists are also called Vectors, Arrays or Matrices
in the Matlab manuals.
1. There are several ways to create a list
o Using the Colon notation, e.g. T= 300:10:400;
o Using the zeros and ones commands, e.g. y=zeros(1,3); z = ones(1,5);
o Explicitly listing terms, e.g. x = [1 4 9 16]
o Reminder: If you do not include a semi-colon, the entire list will be
printed
2. We can do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of a list and a
value using the (+, -, *, /) operators. Try, for example, T*2 , T/5, T+20,
T/10+5
3. Array operations on a list (.* ./ and .^ operators) operate on each element of
the list individually
4. Try x=1:3 y=2:4 then type operations like x.*y, x./y, x.^y
5. Type in T=300; V = 10:20; P=n*R*T./V to get the pressure at several different
volumes
6. There are many intrinsic Functions (sin, cos, exp, ...) which can operate on list
elements. angle=0:pi/4:pi, sin(angle)
Creating Plots
1. To plot two lists, enter a command such as plot(V,P)
2. To select axis range use the axis command with a 4 element list containing
[xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax], e.g. axis([5 8 1 2])
3. To set colors and line types use optional plot arguments
o plot(V,P,'ro') or plot(V,P,'b--')
4. To overlay graphs, type hold on and subsequent graphs will be on the same
axes. To start a new graph, type hold off
5. Labels and titles can be added by using commands such as
o xlabel('Volume (in Liters)')
o ylabel('Pressure (in Atm)')
o title('Ideal Gas Plot')
6. To zoom in on a graph, type zoom on and highlight a region with a mouse