The Wolfram|Alpha Blog is now part of the Wolfram Blog. Join us there for the latest on Wolfram|Alpha and other Wolfram offerings »
The Wolfram|Alpha Team

Wolfram|Alpha Launches Network Admin Professional Assistant and Physics I Course Assistant

June 17, 2011 —
Comments Off

Our ever-growing family of Wolfram|Alpha-powered iOS apps is gaining two new additions today, including the first in our new Professional Assistant series, as well as another entry in our Wolfram Course Assistant Apps. Launching today for iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone are the Physics I Course Assistant and the Network Admin Professional Assistant App. We designed our Professional Assistant Apps with working professionals in mind. They include content specific to each profession and reference information a professional may look up over the course of a normal day.

The Network Admin Professional Assistant is a useful addition to a network admin’s IT toolbox, whether at home or on the job.

Network Admin Professional Assistant

Using the app, a network admin can utilize such features as data transfer calculators, TCP/IP calculators and converters, satellite information including altitude and azimuth, and more.

Satellite information

The app is also handy when generating passwords on the fly:

Password generator Password results

The Physics I Course Assistant is the latest in our series of Wolfram Course Assistant Apps, designed specifically with an optimized keyboard to help those taking introductory physics classes.

Physics I Course 
Assistant

The app assists with multiple topics covered in Physics I classes, including forces, linear and rotational kinematics, celestial mechanics, and more. For example, it can help calculate the forces and motion of a block or ball on an inclined plane:

Inclined planes

It can also be used to calculate the gravitational force between two point masses using Newton’s law of universal gravitation. Just enter both masses, and the app will do the rest of the work:

Calculating gravitational force Gravitational force results

Stay tuned to our blog for more upcoming Wolfram|Alpha-powered apps. What professions would you like us to create apps for?

8 Comments

Thats awesome. Number theory and group theory would be good additions. I just wish there was also a focus on Android. With their announcement of the ADK, it would be interesting to have a Wolfram app that collected real experiment data(like for undergrad/highschool physics labs).

Posted by David June 17, 2011 at 11:44 am

What a wonderful application for physics, that great

Posted by LorenZino June 18, 2011 at 1:34 am

That sound’s really great. Is there any possibility that these applications are made available for windows phone? Since i am a windows phone user, i would love to have this on my phone.

Posted by Ravin June 19, 2011 at 3:59 am

I suggest you publish the ‘Algoriithms’ that underly ‘Course Assistants’ and ‘Professional Assistants’ as the best means of communicating exactly what they are.
It would also be a step towards W|A generating them for its other algorithms.
Brian Gilbert, Volunteer Curator

Posted by Brian Gilbert June 19, 2011 at 10:39 am

information on the fit is good enough to increase my knowledge further

Posted by Andy June 20, 2011 at 1:41 am

Wolfram Alpha can not evolve very fast as long as so much of the work is by people. Any radical change will result in immense revision to the code. indedd so much that it will be financially impreactical.
Therefore W|A should be programmed at the highest level practical and left to generate the lower levels itself. This would fit in with my suggestion above whereby W|A would be programmed to generate ‘Course Assistants’ and ‘Professional Assistants’ from the minimal data provided manually. Also APIs. Then in the event of a fundamental change they would all be regenerated by W|A and not through months or years of manual work.

Posted by Brian Gilbert June 21, 2011 at 5:43 am

This is great and all, but not everyone uses Iphone. I understand it takes work to port these, but it would be awesome if there were versions available for android and windows phones.

Posted by Chris Briggeman June 21, 2011 at 9:02 pm

I agree with Brian, Chris and Andy. It sounds like a good application for online physics experiments.

Posted by Michael Hon June 24, 2011 at 3:51 pm