Waxy.org is the sandbox of Andy Baio, an
independent journalist and programmer living in
Portland, Oregon. I created Google's new calculator is a fun diversion, with several undocumented new features. Here's a few. (Kottke has some more impractical uses. Please post more as you find them.)
- How long can you play a 30GB iPod without repeating a song? Answer: 18.2 days
- How much hard drive space does one hour of 128kbps MP3s consume? Answer: 56.25 megabytes
- How many seconds in a decade? Answer: 315,569,260
- 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius? Answer: 37 degrees
- How many feet in a smoot? Answer: 5.58 (via Ryan)
- What's the answer to life, the universe and everything? Answer: 42
- What's the answer to life, the universe and everything multiplied by the speed of light divided by three teaspoons? Answer: 8.51523871 × 1014 m-2 s-1
- What's the speed of a Delorean going back in time? Answer: 47,600,819,200 m3 kg/s4 (via Cam)
11:35 AM
I hadn't realized they had implemented this feature until yesterday when someone asked me how many miles were in a light year (he was having an argument about whether the Star Trek Voyager could make it back to Earth).
No dice: "What is the average airspeed of an unladen swallow?".
11:39 AM
"ERROR: African or European?"
11:46 AM
More no dice: "head of pin / angels"
A continuing absence of dice: "weight of rock god cannot lift"
Dicelessness: "roads a man must walk down"
11:54 AM
No for:
wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could
chuck wood
licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop
the loneliest number
maids a' milking
deadly sins
Those Stanford Ph.D nerds at Google aren't even trying.
12:14 PM
Another hole in the google calculator that misses one of life's great riddles:
Can Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that even he could not eat it?
12:32 PM
I'm assuming that Google just hooked in an existing calculator program, and have been desperately searching the net to figure out which one, but I can't find it! GNU Units is close, but not quite it, I don't think.
12:34 PM
Smoots!
1:05 PM
The question is not whether an MIT Alumnus developed the Google calculator, but which one.
11:17 PM
The answer depends on how excited you get. What's the answer to life the universe and everything!? Answer: 1.40500612 x 10^51
12:36 AM
Having this available on my cell phone looks to be very handy indeed...
I'm sure we'll see a Google magic 8 ball very soon.
12:03 PM
If you enter "3867*2," click Search, and then turn your monitor upside-down, it say aich-ee-double-hockey-sticks. Hee hee!
4:41 PM
It was implemented in-house by someone who did not attend MIT.
3:06 AM
Is being a geek a bad thing? :)
5:37 PM
For the Delorean traveling through time you should divide by the weight of a Delorean in Kgs which gives you 37 778 427.9 m3 / s4 which makes sense if you consider the fact that you would be traveling in 4th dimensional space
10:10 PM
"Is being a geek a bad thing? :)
ravensong"
Na, it's what we're here for :)
www.thegeekgroup.org
6:33 AM
Got this one from scribot:
answer to life the universe and everything = 42
9:39 AM
It also knows what a Googol is, and knows numbers all the way up to one vigintillion.
1:49 AM
1 Nebuchadnezzar / 1 Jeroboam - 1 Magnum in puncheons
9:18 AM
In response to the question of which MIT geek did the calculator, anon is right--I was at a Search Strategies show last week, and either Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) or one of their engineers was talking about the calc function--it was done in house as a kind of side project, and when the folks at Google heard about it, they thought it was cool so they cleaned it up and implemented it. At least, that's what they were saying.
9:13 PM
1 hogshead=52.5 gallons
9:22 PM
I take that back,
1 hogshead = 63 gallons.
11:44 PM
The only problem with the ipod example is that 30GB ipod hard drives contain 30 billion bytes, not this many. so your answer is more like this (adjusting for a more realistic bitrate)
3:03 AM
The Real Answer to Life The Universe and Everything
1:02 PM
Thanks AlphaGeek :) nice page btw.
Mwah!!.. it's refreshing
2:22 PM
Here are mine ... http://www.donolog.com/archives/000466.html
11:26 PM
No, you need to DIVIDE by 88MPH.
1.21GW / 88MPH
The answer is expressed in Newtons, a unit of acceleration (force).
We all know that acceleration warps space-time from the disney movie "Black Hole", right?
11:38 AM
They may have more calcualtors (for the time being), but at least I think I can beat them with content on my calculator site WebCalc.
9:29 AM
Wait, isn't the speed of a Delorean going back in time just 88 mph?
2:29 PM
42 is a bogus answer because later in te book the question to the answer seems to be "Five Times Nine" (=54) and Arthur says "I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe".
1:33 AM
1 furlong per fortnight = 0.000166309524 m / s
2:38 AM
The lights of Lady Liberty's Torch in horsepower? Answer: 17.4
The volume of the earth in faggots? Answer: 4.0784869 × 10^21