View Single Post
  #3   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 30-09-2005, 19:46
Tristan Lall's Avatar
Tristan Lall Tristan Lall is offline
Registered User
FRC #0188 (Woburn Robotics)
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Rookie Year: 1999
Location: Toronto, ON
Posts: 2,484
Tristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond reputeTristan Lall has a reputation beyond repute
Re: Engineering and Computers

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanddrag
For everyone: Did you know excel can plot on a logrithmic scale? Also, did you know you can do a best fit line? I never knew these things before so that's why I'm telling.
I've got an added challenge: get Excel to print out a graph in (what I think is) y —> log(log(y)) format. I've got set of data for kinematic viscosity vs. temperature for 5W-30 and Mercon SP oils, which I wanted to put in Excel—but Excel seems only capable of doing conventional log(y) graphs, and I haven't bothered to check if Mathcad (which I don't really like) can handle it.

Since this description likely makes no sense to someone who's never seen this graph before, I'll try to clarify: instead of having the major divisions of 10i, for all integers i, each displayed at a fixed distance apart on the y-axis (such as would be the case with log(y) graph paper), this graph displays them at ever-decreasing distances apart, in the same proportions as the logarithmic spacing (so a big segment for 101, and decreasing segments for 102, 103, 104,...).

Why all the thought about how to do this? Well, theoretically, kinematic viscosity should appear mostly linear on this y —> log(log(y)) plot, rather than logarithmic or worse. I wanted to see how well a list of measured data points in a chart compared to the (dubiously accurate) graph which I already had.

Last edited by Tristan Lall : 30-09-2005 at 19:54.
Reply With Quote