Python for Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Book excerpt: The traditional computer science courses for engineering focus on the fundamentals of programming without demonstrating the wide array of practical applications for fields outside of computer science. Thus, the mindset of “Java/Python is for computer science people or programmers, and MATLAB is for engineering” develops. MATLAB tends to dominate the engineering space because it is viewed as a batteries-included software kit that is focused on functional programming. Everything in MATLAB is some sort of array, and it lends itself to engineering integration with its toolkits like Simulink and other add-ins. The downside of MATLAB is that it is proprietary software, the license is expensive to purchase, and it is more limited than Python for doing tasks besides calculating or data capturing. This book is about the Python programming language. Specifically, it is about Python in the context of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Did you know that Python can be used to model a satellite orbiting the Earth? You can find the completed programs and a very helpful 595 page NSA Python tutorial at the book’s GitHub page at https://www.github.com/alexkenan/pymae. Read more about the book, including a sample part of Chapter 5, at https://pymae.github.io