The portion of this assignment that you need to hand in is described at the end of this document. Before you can start programming you need to know what the problem is that you are trying to solve. For the purpose of this exercise we will hold all the parameters in the slope stability equation constant except for the slope angle and the height of the water column above the slip surface. For more information about the derivation of the slope stability factor F see Ritter et al., Process Geomorphology third edition, pages 98 and following. Before you write your program we recommended that you figure out the logic of program.
Many programmers write logic diagrams before they start programming.
Logic diagrams are basically flow charts with arrows connecting boxes which represent commands that will be executed. Logic diagrams can be seen in any introductory programming book and help in laying out the conceptual framework for a program. Make a logic diagram before you start writing your program, or at least make an outline of what your program will do before you write it. Since some of you have little or no programming experience I have made available a sample Matlab script that demonstrates not only how to use a 'for' loop in Matlab and also how to put multiple plots in a window. Execute this program in Matlab and then open up a text editor window to see how the program is designed.