[comp.ai.digest] Seminar - Automatic Equation Derivation

VAL@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU.UUCP (04/27/87)

		   AUTOMATIC DERIVATION OF THE
		 EQUATION OF MOTION OF A PENDULUM

		    Thursday, April 30, 4:15pm
			Bldg. 160, Room 161K

			   Michael Beeson
		     (beeson@csli.stanford.edu)
		     San Jose State University

Some knowledge of elementary physics has been formalized in first-order
logic. The domain of discourse includes physical objects and their
relations, mathematical formulas, and the semantic relation between
formulas and objects. The knowledge in question has been written in
Prolog and is sufficient to support an automatic derivation of the
differential equation of motion of a pendulum. The inference engine
makes use of the Knuth-Bendix method and also of a symbolic computation
system for algebra and calculus. Perhaps this is the first program to
use both knowledge representation in logic and symbolic computation.