How Can Non-Expressional Curves Be Used to Measure Energy Transfer?

[johnintheuk]

I'm trying to find the quantity of energy transferred between two systems. I have an absorption curve and a drive curve, but neither of these follow a mathematical expression.

I want to use the absorption curves to find out how much of the drive is being transferred. I know one way to do this would be to integrate the curves, but they can't really be approximated by an expression.

How else might I go about it?

I have actually thought about drawing them, then doing the old cutting out and measuring the area trick for a rough estimation. Surely there's something easier than that though.

Maybe scan them and use something on the computer to find the enclosed area?

But there's a lot of sharp deviation on the curves, so I'd really need to cut the x-axis up into a lot of sections to get any kind of accuracy whatsoever.

 

[OptimalDesign]

I'm trying to find the quantity of energy transferred between two systems. I have an absorption curve and a drive curve, but neither of these follow a mathematical expression.

I want to use the absorption curves to find out how much of the drive is being transferred. I know one way to do this would be to integrate the curves, but they can't really be approximated by an expression.

"math expression" means what to you?

Do you have some data that we could look at or a plot?

As long as the data is continuous, a math expression should be possible to find. See this http://www.digitalCalculus.com/demo/curvfit.html" program with its many examples.