Use Google search as a Calculator

Though its an old trick but many of my readers keep asking me to write about Google Tricks and Tips and this post is dedicated to them. In this post, i shall explain the process of using Google as a Calculator.

I use Google for almost anything these days, be it Getting more blogging ideas using Google, Using Google to track the movies playing in my area, checking out cricket scores or to get the local time of some place i have business in.

To use Google’s built-in calculator function, simply enter the calculation you’d like done into the search box as seen below in the picture. The picture below tries to compute the result for 5*9+(sqrt 10)^3.

Google Calculator

Google Calculator is pretty intelligent in terms that it can understand things other than the mathematical formulas and give you results. Try making a search for 100 miles in kilometers or 0×7d3 in roman numerals or speed of light.

Other good things to know

You can force the calculator to try and evaluate an expression by putting an equals sign (=) after it. This only works if the expression is mathematically resolvable. For example, 1-800-555-1234= will return a result, but 1/0= will not.

Parentheses can be used to enclose the parts of your expression that you want evaluated first. For example, (1+2)*3 causes the addition to happen before the multiplication.

The in operator is used to specify what units you want used to express the answer. Put the word in followed by the name of a unit at the end of your expression. This works well for unit conversions such as: 5 kilometers in miles.

You can use hexadecimal, octal and binary numbers. Prefix hexadecimal numbers with 0x, octal numbers with 0o and binary numbers with 0b. For example: 0×7f + 0b10010101.

The calculator understands many different units, as well as many physical and mathematical constants. These can be used in your expression. Many of these constants and units have both long and short names. You can use either name in most cases. For example, km and kilometer both work, as do c and the speed of light.

For more information on using Google Calculator, try reading Google’s Help Page.