MELTS for MATLAB: A new Educational and Research Tool for Computational Thermodynamics
Abstract
The MELTS family of software tools is widely used by geoscience educators to teach the petrology and geochemistry, and to introduce students to computational thermodynamics (see melts.ofm-research.org). MELTS for MATLAB is a new interface to the rhyolite-MELTS and pMELTS algorithms that is well-suited to an educational setting. It has the flexibility to automate calculations, investigate parameter space, and easily visualize the results. We will present the results of working with students and educators to implement teaching exercises in MELTS for MATLAB, including at a two-day workshop immediately prior to the Fall Meeting.
MELTS for MATLAB is a set of class-based wrappers to libalphaMELTS (magmasource.caltech.edu/alphamelts). The interface is clean and simple, making it a good introduction to object-oriented programming for new users. The software runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS, El Capitan or later. A console has been added to the Windows version, so that the user experience on all three platforms is nearly identical. MELTS for MATLAB has been developed using MATLAB R2017b, but is being tested on other recent releases. MELTS for MATLAB can be used to perform equilibration calculations or extract phase properties for rhyolite-MELTS 1.0.2, 1.1.0, 1.2.0, as well as pMELTS. All options available in the rhyolite-MELTS graphical user interface (GUI) are implemented, including fractional crystallization and "Find Liquidus". Educators familiar with the GUI will find that some of the syntax resembles the GUI text input. The trace element functionality of alphaMELTS will be added soon. Once alphaMELTS 2 is released properly it will be able to export MELTS for MATLAB scripts so that teaching exercises may be easily transferred from one interface to the other. The ENKI portal (www.enki-portal.org) is rapidly growing resource for geoscience educational tools, hosted as Jupyter notebooks. The computing skills required for MELTS for MATLAB are intermediate between the more traditional MELTS software (GUI, alphaMELTS, MELTS for Excel) and the ENKI portal, where ideally users need some familiarity with Python (although that will change as the ENKI interface matures). With its gentle learning curve, MELTS for MATLAB will be a useful educational tool in itself, as well as providing a path to many examples on the ENKI portal.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMED44B..23A
- Keywords:
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- 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0845 Instructional tools;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0850 Geoscience education research;
- EDUCATION