Tutorial 13: Creating Notebooks

R. Dover, IMSA

This notebook will show you how to create the simplest of notebooks. Do not feel the need to make it really fancy. In fact, too much formatting will often make it look worse, not better. Much can be done very easily to make a good, clean notebook that looks quite respectable.

Text

The first issue is how to create a text cell. There are two approaches, before or after. Open a new (blank) notebook by choosing the File menu, New and then Notebook.

Before: If you are thinking ahead, when you are ready to begin a new cell, choose Format ▶ Style ▶ Text. Then type. Alternatively, when you are ready for a new cell, click the little bubble with the plus sign that is attached to the horizontal line. Choose Plain Text.

After: Type something. Whatever you like. As a default, it appears in Input style. Select the cell bracket to the right. From the Format menu, choose Style and then Text. The words should change to plain text, and it should look like the other text in this notebook. More typing should also appear as regular text since the entire cell is now a text cell.

Now select this cell by selecting its bracket to the right. Check out the Format menu. Further down, you will see several other choices such as Show Fonts..., Face, Size, etc. There are many possibilities. Play a little with these. Hopefully, they are self-explanatory, or a quick experiment will show the effect. Be sure to note the options in the groups toward the end of the menu, such as Text Alignment.

This time, choose one word from what you have written. (You may want to create and use another cell.) Highlight the word. Then use some of the same options. In other words, you can affect a single word or expression, or you can change all contents in the entire cell.

Sections

Throughout this tutorial, sections have been used repeatedly. Occasionally, subsections were also created. From the Format menu, under Style, there are many options. Just as we used Text in the preceding section, we can choose Section before or after typing the section title. Following this cell, choose Section. Type a title. Then create a new cell following that one, and type something in it. (Be creative!) Note how the new cells are automatically grouped together.

Then create a new cell within your section. Choose Subsection and type something. Create another cell following this. It should be grouped within your subsection as well as being inside your section. You should be able to open and close these sections as before.

Going in the other direction, from the same submenu, you can choose various levels of titles. If desired, you can collapse the entire notebook inside of a Title cell.

More Options

Go back to the Format menu. Find Stylesheet and pick something other than Default for your new notebook. There are quite a number of interesting choices of designs and colors. You may also understand very quickly why Default is as it is. (These tutorials were created with another option that is no longer an option for some reason. So these are back to Default.)

Another menu item allows you to Edit Stylesheet. CAREFUL: Be very careful not to change a built-in stylesheet!

Exercise

Create a new notebook.

Add a title: Some Trig Graphs

Create a section and title it Sine Function. Use a text cell to explain that you will be showing the graph. (Optional: Add tick marks with

's.)

Plot the graph.

Create a second, similar section for the cosine function along with its graph, and create a third section for the tangent function.

Cite this as: Ruth Dover, "Introduction to Mathematica for High School Math (for Students and Teachers) #13" from the Notebook Archive (2021), https://notebookarchive.org/2021-09-6h2i791