Significant Figures Calculator

If you’re looking for a significant figures calculator, this is the place to be. If you’re after information on Microsoft Calculator Plus then read on…

Here’s a virtual gadget from Micro$oft that the Sig Figs site should hold dear to its virtual heart - the Calculator Plus. It should replace the old M$ calculator on the desktop of anyone serious about doing sums and conversions. I’ve always relied on onlineconversion.com until now, and admittedly the Calculator Plus doesn’t cover all possible combinations of units, but it does allow you to interchange common length, mass, energy, pressure, power, temperature, and velocities as well as currencies (the version I downloaded had European currencies (not including the British Pound Sterling, however), but I’m not entirely sure why. Europeans have the Euro now, there are no Belgian Francs or Irish Punts any longer. I presume the US download will convert silver dollars into gold nuggets or something similar.

Of particular interest in these times of our supposedly conserving fossil fuels to prevent significant global warming is a converter for fuel consumption. You can convert from miles per gallon to liters per 100 kilometers for instance. Our runaround does about 50 mpg, which works out as 19.824346636340239634499097026236 km per liter.

Look at all those digits and only the first three worthy of being called significant, but watch the rounding, 50 mpg should be 20 km/l. That’s the trouble with calculators they don’t usually tell you how to work out significant figures.