As faculty members in physics and workshop participants, we agree that helping our students to

• become competent with computer algebra software (such as MAPLE), and
• gain experience in its utility for learning physics, doing physics, and communicating about physics

are activities worthy of inclusion on the undergraduate agenda.

We have a variety of backgrounds and teaching styles and work in a wide range of institutions. A wholesale (or “revolutionary”) injection of MAPLE into undergraduate physics instruction will be attractive to some faculty members and realistic in certain institutions, we believe that for most physics programs an “evolutionary” approach is preferable. To use Steven Gilbert’s phrase, we favor a “slow revolution” by the unobtrusive but continual incorporation of MAPLE as a tireless and expert mathematical companion in the exploration of physics by undergraduates.

We think that it is important that MAPLE appear in as many weeks of as many courses as possible – not as the center of attention, but to enable students and their teachers to give more attention to

• the general principles,
• the logical structure, and
• the range of applicability

of our discipline.

We believe that judicious use of MAPLE can greatly reduce the mathematical drudgery that has prevented generations of students from

• asking plenty of what-if questions,
• checking a variety of limiting cases, and
• generally taking to heart the power, beauty, and coherence of physics.

We believe that use of MAPLE will broaden greatly the range of problems that can be assigned in both introductory and intermediate level courses. Historically our problem assignments have tended to concentrate on problems having exact solutions. This emphasis can create a fairly misleading impression of the nature of physics. MAPLE greatly facilitates approximate and graphical analysis of real-world problems that have no exact solutions. This also helps the student develop model-building ability in a broad range of physical situations.