Instructional use of declarative languages for the study of machine transients

The uses of high-level and declarative programming environments for the teaching of machine transients is illustrated. The clarity and flexibility afforded by this new generation of mathematical software environments is demonstrated. Three environments are compared: Speakeasy, PC-Matlab, and SOLVER-Q. Results obtained using these environments are compared with simulations obtained using the electromagnetic transients program (EMTP). Numerical results of simulations are similar, with minor differences between constant and adaptive time step programs. Execution times differed, with environments that emphasize symbolic computation slower than those that are able to perform numeric simulations alone. The clarity of the expressions needed to produce a simulation in each environment is examined