I have purchased a TI CX CAS calculator recently, after having gone through quite a bit of trouble to get it delivered in Kolkata.

The troble was certainly worth it, since I could immediately use its graphing features to explain certain aspects of mathematical functions to our son, who likes mathematics and is a bit of an independent learner. I am therefore certainly highly appreciative of its graphing capabilities which allows one to extract information from them, apply some transformations, vary parameters interactively and visualize the shape shifts. Being able to observe multiple colored traces at the same time is itself a very handy feature as well as the availibility of CAS features. I am a computional astroparticle physicist and both my nature of work and my interest in learning technologies have lead me to explore almost all of what is available either in the floss/ commercial markets. I have used Matlab extensively in my research, work and have taken courses in Computational Physics using Fortran-9x for U.G students; Computer Interfacing, and Matlab for P.G students and a course on Python for M.tech students of Bioinformatics which I have designed for them. I have also designed and delivered a course in introductory mathematical physics making use of 100% individual hands on parallel sessions on computer explorations of related topics. My project students have used Maple and developed Matlab GUI programs in their work and have designe d Tracker interfaces for experiments using video analysis of Physics experiments. I have mentioned this background to indicate the ways in which I think the TI calculator would be an useful supplement to classroom education at the First/Second year of an undergraduate Physics curriculum in our country. Although I have successfully delivered a course with hands on computer explorati ons for four years, It could be done only for an one semester course, since obviousl y not all Physics classes can be taken in a computer room. If one wants to make su ch explorations a regular part of the course, we need to use something more portabl e and within easier approach and that is where the TI squarely fits in except for its prohibitive price tag. To test the CAS capabilities I have done some integra ls related to the calculation of white dwarf parameters and they come out right in the symbolic domain. The lack of standard special functions (the standard ones l ike the Bessel, Hermite, Legendre functions etc) is a drawback which won't extend its useful life beyond the first one and the half years of U.G work. Another annoyance is that it requires the presence of the TI student calculator to charge from the port of any laptop computer, which, in a way hurts its portab ility. The non-qwerty keyboard is also an initial hindrance. The student software is a slow loader and takes up a lot of memory, something which needs to be addressed. I could not tes t the data acquisition functions since I am waiting to get a set of compatible sen sors delivered to us. In summary, I think that the TI CAS calculator is a very potent solver of proble ms and can contribute a lot towards enhancing the classroom experience of

science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students right in the classroom itself. But that in itself should not become a mandate and lose its inspirational powers.