Google Calculator fun...



  • Someone showed me this today:

    ((pi * (e * pi * e) * (pi * e * pi) * (e * pi * e) * (((((twenty three (stone knots)) plus (two billion (smoot grains))) plus (three thousand eight hundred and seventy nine (slug feet))) * pi) per (carat yards))) per c) * (cubits per week) = 1.00000092

    Uh... WTF? How does that work out? :P



  • what do you think it should be?



  • @Daniel15 said:

    Someone showed me this today:

    ((pi * (e * pi * e) * (pi * e * pi) * (e * pi * e) * (((((twenty three (stone knots)) plus (two billion (smoot grains))) plus (three thousand eight hundred and seventy nine (slug feet))) * pi) per (carat yards))) per c) * (cubits per week) = 1.00000092

    Uh... WTF? How does that work out? :P

    Well for a start it's needlessly complicated, it can be simplified to: 

    pi^6 * e^5 / c * (23 stone knots + 2e9 smoot grains + 3879 slug feet) cubits per (carat yard week)

    But I'm having trouble figuring out what the WTF is - where's the link to the mug...



  • Found this blog entry from 2003:

    After verifying that 2+2=4, I tried to figure out the largest difference between the smallest and largest units of measurement on a given scale, finally ending up with ~3.08 x 10^26 angstroms in a parsec (26 orders of magnitude difference).

    If you delve into the world of obscure metric prefixes, you can get up to 64 orders of magnitude difference....there are ~3.08 x 10^64 yoctometers in a yottaparsec.

    If you want to get really ridiculous, you can find out there are ~3.08 x 10^103 yoctometers in one vigintillion parsecs.

    That got me thinking...what's the limit of the Google Calculator's computational ability? 170! (170! = 1*2*3*4* ... *168*169*170) is equal to ~7.26 x 10^306, but 171! doesn't work.

    2^1023 = ~8.99 x 10^307, but 2^1024 doesn't work.  After some trial and error, the upper limit of the calculator is ~1.797 × 10^308...or basically anything less than 2^1024.  My binary math is a little rusty, but that limit seems to correspond to 32-bit double precision real arithmetic.  Which makes sense, but it would have been more fun if the limit would have been a googol. (neither googolplex nor infinity return calculator results.)

     



  • @tster said:

    what do you think it should be?

    Other than it being mildly surprising that it parses written-out numbers (and I did not know that the word "plus" worked), one might not know what a smoot is.

    @El_Heffe said:

    32-bit double precision real arithmetic.

    32-bit what now? I think you mean 64 (53-bit mantissa, 11-bit exponent)



  • @Daniel15 said:

    Someone showed me this today:

    ((pi * (e * pi * e) * (pi * e * pi) * (e * pi * e) * (((((twenty three (stone knots)) plus (two billion (smoot grains))) plus (three thousand eight hundred and seventy nine (slug feet))) * pi) per (carat yards))) per c) * (cubits per week) = 1.00000092

    Uh... WTF? How does that work out? :P

    I'll start by some helpful indenting, and what matters is the units

    (

        (pi *

            (e * pi * e) *

            (pi * e * pi) *

            (e * pi * e) *

            (

                (

                    (

                        (

                            (twenty three

                                (stone knots) // mass times speed? - but google also knows the knot as a unit of LENGTH

                            )

                        plus

                            (two billion

                                (smoot grains) // mass times length

                            )

                        )

                    plus

                        (three thousand eight hundred and seventy nine

                            (slug feet) // mass times length again

                        )

                    )

                * pi

                )

            per

                (carat yards) //mass time length

            )

        )

    per c // inverse speed

    ) *

    (cubits per week) speed

    = 1.00000092

     

    We add three quantities of mass times length, divide them by another of mass times length, producing a pure number.

    Then we divide that by a speed, then multiply it by a speed, again getting a pure number as a result.

    So it all works out. 



  • @Daniel15 said:

    Someone showed me this today:

    ((pi * (e * pi * e) * (pi * e * pi) * (e * pi * e) * (((((twenty three (stone knots)) plus (two billion (smoot grains))) plus (three thousand eight hundred and seventy nine (slug feet))) * pi) per (carat yards))) per c) * (cubits per week) = 1.00000092

    Uh... WTF? How does that work out? :P

    Clearly a WTF. I calculated the answer in my head and got 1.00000093

     

    I still like the "answer to life the universe and everything" thing that the calculator does though.
     



  • Moving towards the goal at 1 attoparsec per microfortnight.



  • @phelyan said:

    Moving towards the goal at 1 attoparsec per microfortnight.

    A hasty conversion in which much can go wrong clocks you at about 8.9 centimeters per hour.



  • @dhromed said:

    @phelyan said:

    Moving towards the goal at 1 attoparsec per microfortnight.

    A hasty conversion in which much can go wrong clocks you at about 8.9 centimeters per hour.

    You're off by a factor of just over 1030. It's 91.8 meters per hour. See http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/A/attoparsec.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Attoparsec



  • Ah, I mistook the microFT for milliFT.

    We can clip the 1030 to 1000, then, as the hasty conversion included some unscrupulous rounding.



  • Speaking of micro, does anyone else (hand)write things like μscope, μphone, etc? Or is it a WTF that I do that?



  • @m0ffx said:

    Speaking of micro, does anyone else (hand)write things like μscope, μphone, etc? Or is it a WTF that I do that?

    A straw poll of me, my imaginary friend, and the 17 voices in my head revealed that you're alone on this one.   

    On the other hand, I'd really like to begin using μfortnight in my vocabulary, but it's so short that I'll probably have to settle for μyears (~3.5sec) and μdecades (~5.25min).  I bet I could convince at least one other person to do the same.



  • @purge said:

    @m0ffx said:

    Speaking of micro, does anyone else (hand)write things like μscope, μphone, etc? Or is it a WTF that I do that?

    A straw poll of me, my imaginary friend, and the 17 voices in my head revealed that you're alone on this one.   

    On the other hand, I'd really like to begin using μfortnight in my vocabulary, but it's so short that I'll probably have to settle for μyears (~3.5sec) and μdecades (~5.25min).  I bet I could convince at least one other person to do the same.

    You had me at "μfortnight."

    Did anyone else notice that the seconds in a μyear and minutes in a μdecade come out to be the number of inches wide that floppy disks are?  Methinks that purge is onto something.  Maybe (the company that made these devices --- I believe CH was one of them) knew all along.  I know that it took about a μdecade to get any kind of information off of a 5.25" disk.



  • @m0ffx said:

    Speaking of micro, does anyone else (hand)write things like μscope, μphone, etc? Or is it a WTF that I do that?

    I've only ever seen and used µC. Sorry.


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