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I rested on this tutorial.

After issuing the command with "solve" function:

%i2 solve((a-b-sqrt(-c^2+2*c*y-y^2+r^2))^2+(d-y)^2=2*r^2*(1-cos(e)),y); 

The output is: enter image description here

Why there is unknown quantity "y" on the right side?

P.S.

There's no "Maxima" tag, what a pity! However, I was redirected here by a stackoverflow moderator, so I assume it is not offtopic.

Maxima is a computer algebra system based on a 1982 version of Macsyma. It is written in Common Lisp and runs on all POSIX platforms such as Mac OS X, Unix, BSD, and GNU/Linux as well as under Microsoft Windows. It is free software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_%28software%29

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    @kowalt, that I cannot say; I do not have the thing installed on my computer to evaluate this properly.2012-07-23

1 Answers 1

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The general solve command in Macsyma has limited capabilities for dealing with algebraic functions. You can work around this by using the rational function package as in the code below. There I define w to be the sqrt, then solve for w, square, then solve for y.

(algebraic:true, tellrat( w^2 = -c^2+2*c*y-y^2+r^2 ));

solve(rat(solve(rat((a-b-w)^2+(d-y)^2 = 2*r^2*(1-cos(e))),w)^2),y)

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    Thanks, this helped a lot. Could you explain a little more what rat() and tellrat() are doing here and why these steps are used. I was able to solve an equation with this method but I'm bother that I don't really understand why it works.2015-11-17