Re: funny capacitor (EXCEL)

[Ludwik Kowalski <KowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>]

I asked:

> > At the end of iterations I have potentials displayed in
> > all cells (with respect to my rectangular enclosure).
> > What I would like to do, but do not know how, is use
> > colors to identify potentials

 John S. Denker suggested:

> Look under Formatting :: Conditional Formatting.

I did. Unfortunately my Excel (in Office 98 for Mac)
allows for only three conditions. It means I could use
only three colors (in addition to black, the default).

Do other versions of Excel allow for more conditions in
the dialog box of "Conditional formatting"? I wanted to
visually identify equipotential regions with ten or more
colors. Any suggestion on how can this be done in Excel?

John also wrote:
> ...there are huuuuge numbers of people who are intimidated
> by standard computer languages but not so intimidated by
> spreadsheets.  Therefore one could argue that there are
> pedagogical/psychological advantages to using spreadsheets
> for some purposes, especially in a course that is nominally
> devoted to physics not computer technology.
>
> These pedagogical/psychological factors would be an
> interesting topic for discussion some day.

Yes, it is a topic worth discussing. I would prefer to deal
with students who can program in a standard language. If
it was up to me I would impose one language, for example,
True Basic, as a high school graduation requirement. A trend
in that direction existed about twenty years ago.
Ludwik Kowalski