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Online Conversion

March 14th, 2007 · by David Bradley >> 6 Comments

No, this is nothing to do with any kind of metaphysical epiphany, it is simply a post to introduce you to the excellent online units converter that we have made available to readers in the sidebar (to the right) courtesy of cordon bleu blogger and widget programmer Sourjya Sen, better known as miCRoSCoPiC^ eaRthLinG (or even m^e) over on Chaos Laboratory. The idea came about after Sourjya published details of his currency converter widget on the Weblog Tools Collection site and I commented that an equivalent widget for units would make a perfect fit for ScienceText. No sooner had I asked and chasing the heels of the Micro$oft Calculator Plus highlighted here yesterday, Sourjya announced he had created just such a widget.

With his units converter widget you can interchange dozens of different units of length, area, volume, speed, and mass or weight. From standard units such as feet and inches, kilograms, and gallons to some of the more obscure units such as chalders, cloves, and cargas.

Want to know how long 7 inches is in cm? Simply choose length as your unit type (wait a moment until the rotating flower icon at the top right of the widget stops spinning). Enter 7 (or whatever your length is) where it says “Amount” and choose inches as the “From” units and centimeters as the “To”. Hit “Convert”.

We have set up the widget to display just two decimal places in the answer, which will appear in the “Result” box within a fraction of a second – 17.78 cm – now, who’s a big boy? Of course, strictly speaking we should round that answer to the same number of significant figures to which our initial value was measured, so for a conversion of 7 inches to centimeters, that would be 20 cm. If the initial value had been 7.0, we could round to 18 cm, or if it was 7.00 inches, we could call it 17.8 cm.

Give it a try. If you have your own widget-enabled Wordpress website then you can download the units converter here where you will also find additional requirements to enable the widget on your site. In enabling a beta version, ScienceText has also highlighted a couple of issues with the first version, that Sourjya has now kindly fixed. It is possible to run a simpler version with fewer unit options, if readers request it.

6 responses so far ↓

  • miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG // Mar 14, 2007 at 4:46 pm

    Thank you David for such a wonderful review :) Made me feel that every bit of effort I put on that plug-in was more than justified, And am glad that you found it so useful.

    I’ll be improving on the looks & functionality as well as add in more conversion types / units. I’ll keep you updated on any new developments. And yeah, the non-widgetized version should follow soon. I’ve almost got it :D

    Best regards,
    Sourjya

  • David Bradley // Mar 14, 2007 at 8:33 pm

    Great news on the non-widget version. I’ve got a whole stack of science sites I’d like to use this online units converter with!

  • miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG // Mar 15, 2007 at 8:56 am

    BTW, if you notice – for most part the widget has adapted to your theme’s CSS except for the drop-down boxes (unit selectors) and the amount input box. That, unfortunately, is something I cannot control.

    However, if you are interested I can suggest a small modification to your CSS – which involves inserting one more line defining the styles of the drop-downs & inputs – that can make the widget look entirely blended in with your theme.

    Best Regards,
    Sourjya :)

  • David Bradley // Mar 19, 2007 at 6:23 pm

    I’ve switched the online converter to basic mode, there really are just too many obscure units in the extended version for the majority of readers and I’d like to make it as accessible as possible.

  • David Bradley // May 14, 2007 at 11:42 am

    Chemist Peter Murray-Rust pointed out that there was a problem with our online conversion widget (which we also use on the Spinneret Chemistry News website). Apparently, he tried to convert between centimeters and kilometers. Not a common conversion, I hasten to add, but a potentially valid one nevertheless. Unfortunately, because I had set the default number of decimal places displayed to just two, such a conversion 1 cm to km, gave the answer 0.00 km. Which to two decimal places, with rounding is, as far as I am aware, and Sig Fig readers can probably back me up on this, correct. 1 cm is 0.00 km to two decimal places.

    This is not a bug, it’s a consequence of carrying out an odd and unlikely conversion. Admittedly, we did not include a note to alert users to this perhaps odd possibility. So, as a compromise, I’ve upped the number of decimals displayed. This will, of course, bring with it its own problems in that converting between certain units will produce an apparent precision that does not in reality exist. Convert 1 cm to inches, for instance. The answer given is 0.39370″ But, that’s got six significant figures, whereas our original value was given only to one sig fig, 1 cm, as opposed to 1.00000 cm, which is different.

    Anyway, thanks for setting us straight.

  • Antony Williams // May 15, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    Thanks for working on the online converter issue noted in Peter’s blog. Peter’s analysis of ChemSpider and the accompanying analysis of your blog have migrated from data content comments, to prediction comments to definitions and now to this tool on Spinneret. It is at a level of detail unseen from other testers and we have voted Peter “Tester of the Month” as a result of his feedback.

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