University of Oxford Mathematician Dr Tom Crawford explains how to solve some simple Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) by treating them like Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs).

Practice solving some simple PDEs for yourself with this free worksheet in Maple Learn.

The first examples look at homogeneous first and second order PDEs where we integrate directly and replace ‘integration constants’ by ‘integration functions’. The third example looks at the inhomogeneous case and how we can use our methods for solving ODEs in the PDE context.