modelica.university: A Platform for Interactive Modelica Content

Abstract

The World Wide Web was conceived of as a medium for the expression and exploration of scientific and engineering ideas. However, much of the innovation in web technologies is now focused on consumer facing applications. Although science and engineering content is available on the web (Wolfram Alpha, 2017), there are not that many tools that allow engineers and scientists to create and build scientific and engineering applications. Fundamentally, HTML and HTTP are certainly sufficient for the creation of scientific and engineering content just as they are for the creation of online magazines and websites. But while a number of "content management systems" have been created to facilitate the publication of prose, there are very few such tools that cater to making it easy to create scientific and engineering content. In this paper, we will present a platform which can be thought of as a content management system for scientific and engineering content. We will start by describing what we believe to be the fundamental requirements for such a system. From there, we will discuss two different appli- cations built on this platform. The first is an interactive tutorial for teaching the basics of the Modelica languages and the other is an example application that involves cre- ating interactive content for use in an engineering course on hydro-electric power generation. This content will be published on the modelica.university domain and we are already collaborating with others to contribute additional content to the site.