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Timeline for Runge-Kutta 2nd Order ODE Solver

Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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Jun 6, 2014 at 14:02 comment added InquisitiveInquirer I've been using NDSolve extensively for the past year, but I always like knowing how things work, so this post was my attempt at figuring out how numerical ODE solving works :)
Jun 6, 2014 at 9:39 comment added Sascha The link I provided shows you how to numerically solve differential equations in Mathematica. You don't have to implement your own algorithm - Mathematica comes with tones of algorithms for almost everything. You don't even have to tell Mathematica which algorithm to use as it automatically chooses one if non is explicitly given.
Jun 5, 2014 at 8:56 vote accept InquisitiveInquirer
Jun 4, 2014 at 18:06 comment added InquisitiveInquirer I'm not necessarily trying to find out how to numerically solve a 2nd order ODE using RK4 only, but since I have the algorithm at hand and RK4 is very common, I chose to try and solve it using this solver. I know how to convert 2nd order ODEs to systems of 1st order ODEs and solve them on paper, but doing it numerically in Mathematica is proving tricky as I do know have enough experience as I would like in using the language. Your link doesn't seem to give any algorithms for solving 2nd order ODEs, it only seems to give variable coefficients for different methods.
Jun 4, 2014 at 16:11 comment added Sascha As far as I am concerned the type of solver (e.g. Runge Kutta, explicit Euler,...) doesn't have anything to do with rewriting an ODE of order n as n individual first order ODEs
Jun 4, 2014 at 9:18 comment added InquisitiveInquirer Thanks Sascha, but unfortunately that doesn't show explicitly how to convert a 2nd order ODE to two 1st order ODEs using RK4. It seems to give more of an overview of possible solvers used by NDSolve.
Jun 3, 2014 at 19:33 comment added Sascha Have a look at reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/tutorial/…
Jun 3, 2014 at 12:49 answer added Holger Schmitz timeline score: 2
Jun 2, 2014 at 22:03 comment added eldo oops, shame over me :)
Jun 2, 2014 at 22:00 comment added InquisitiveInquirer That's the question I asked yesterday :) I want to move on from a plain system of 1st order ODEs to a 2nd order ODE using a system of equations.
Jun 2, 2014 at 21:46 comment added eldo Maybe related: link
Jun 2, 2014 at 21:33 history asked InquisitiveInquirer CC BY-SA 3.0