Google calculator. Natural language parsing and calculation. Very cool.

For instance, did you know 1 cubic parsec = 2.93800656 × 10E79 cubic angstroms? Or that there are 6.04800 × 10E20 femtoseconds in a week? Or 2.21163264 × 10E28 acres in a square lightyear?

Type "microns in five miles" in to a google search, and it happily tells you there are 8046720000. Neat.

pca

The best one is "speed of light in furlongs per fortnight"

Gareth

Yeah. It's scads easier than consulting a conversion table, especially considering I almost always do it backwards and find that there are 2.54 inches in a centimeter.

I've done that before...the best way to avoid that is the "common sense" method. Just imagine a ruler and which unit is smaller. All of the sudden it becomes much easier than just spitting out the memorized number.

2.54000508, actually.



-Zeke

ps: I've always liked www.onlineconversion.com ...

be careful if you ask it about pints and gallons, it is US centric in that area. If you tell it that you want imperial pint and gallons it works ok though.

"one pint in imperial pints"

"one US pint = 0.832673844 Imperial pints"

I like this one. M-x isearch for the internet...

Peter

Well, it becomes more difficult when you're talking about parsecs and AUs or kilowatts and hosrsepower, or something else that's not immediately apparent.