ABSTRACT
Most physical systems can be described in mathematical terms through differential equations. Specific types of differential equation have been solved in the preceding chapters, i.e. the separable-variable type, the homogeneous type and the linear type. However, differential equations such as those used to solve real-life problems may not necessarily be directly solvable, that is, do not have closed form solutions. Instead, solutions can be approximated using numerical methods and in science and engineering, a numeric approximation to the solution is often good enough to solve a problem. A number of other analytical methods of solving differential equations exist. However the differential equations that can be solved by such analytical methods is fairly restricted. Where a differential equation and known boundary conditions are given, an approximate solution may be obtained by applying a numerical method. There are a number of such numerical methods available and the simplest of these is called Euler’s method.
