Show your work!

show-your-work is a Python module to help with writing solutions to physics problems with numerical answers. It relies on other modules to do most of the heavy lifting.

Installing

Show-your-work is available on PyPi. The package is named show-your-work-utils to avoid potential name conflicts. Install it with your favorite package manager (mine is uv).

$ pip install show-your-work-utils
$ uv add show-your-work-utils
$ rye add show-your-work-utils
$ poetry add show-your-work-utils

Motivation

When writing detailed example problems for a physics class, we often need to plug numerical values into an equation and compute a numerical result. show-your-work allows you to write an equation in latex, add numerical substitutions for each term in the equations, produce the latex of your equation with numerical values substituted in, and then evaluate the equation with the given numerical values.

It is especially handy when used with tools like compudoc.

From the doc/examples directory

% main.tex.cd
\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{siunitx}
\usepackage{physics}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{fullpage}

\author{C.D. Clark III}
\title{show-your-work/compudoc example}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

% {{{
% from show_your_work import Expression, Equation
% import pint
% ureg = pint.UnitRegistry()
% Q_ = ureg.Quantity
% def Lx_filter(input,fmt=""):
%   text = fmt_filter(input,fmt+"Lx")
%   return text
% jinja2_env.filters["Lx"] = Lx_filter
% line_eq = Equation(r"\\v{y} = \\v{m}\\v{x} + \\v{b}")
% print(line_eq.latex)
% }}}
$$
{{ line_eq.latex }}
$$
This gives the relationship between a dependent variable $y$ on an independent variable $x$.
% {{{
% slope = 3
% y_intercept = 2
% val = 10
% }}}
For example, for a slope $m = {{slope}}$ and y-intercept $b = {{y_intercept}}$, the value for $y$ at $x = {{val}}$ would be
% {{{
% line_eq.rhs.add_substitution('m',slope)
% line_eq.rhs.add_substitution('b',y_intercept)
% line_eq.rhs.add_substitution('x',val)
% }}}
$$
{{ line_eq.latex_with_substitutions }} = {{line_eq.rhs.eval()}}
$$
% {{{
% kinematics_eq1 = Equation( r"\\v{x} = \\v{v} \\v{t} + \\v{x_0}", "meter")
% v = Q_(60,'mph').to("km/hr")
% t = Q_(40,'min')
% x0 = Q_(150,'yd').to("m")
% kinematics_eq1.rhs.add_substitution('v',v)
% kinematics_eq1.rhs.add_substitution('t',t)
% kinematics_eq1.rhs.add_substitution('x_0',x0)
% }}}
Now, when dealing with physical quantities, we will have to consider units. Take an example from kinematics. The
position of an object traveling at constant speed is given by the equation,
$$
{{kinematics_eq1.latex}},
$$
which is just the equation for a line with $v$ as the slope and $x0$ as the y-intercept. If a car is traveling at
$v = {{v|Lx}}$ and we didn't start the stop watch until we were {{x0|Lx}} out of town, the car's distance from town
after traveling for {{t|Lx}} would be:
$$
{{kinematics_eq1.latex_with_substitutions}} = {{kinematics_eq1.rhs.eval(Q_)|Lx}}
$$



\end{document}

This template file can be rendered to LaTeX with compudoc and then compiled to a PDF with latexmk:

$ compudoc main.tex.cd
$ latexmk main

which will give this PDF