Use of a spreadsheet program in electromagnetics

Abstract

This paper describes how a spreadsheet program can assist electromagnetics education at the undergraduate level. Spreadsheet software has proven to be an important pedagogical tool for a variety of problems in electrical engineering education. Using the power of the 123 macros, a menu driven spreadsheet program is used to compute the solution of some electrostatic boundary value problems for an introductory-level electromagnetics course. With the on-screen numerical and visual feedback and the ease of entering data, students will be able to take a close look at the effects of varying the input data of the model problems.