By Chris Sherman Executive Editor, August 13, 2002
Searching for a calculator for a specific need? The Calculators Online Center has descriptions and links to thousands of specialized calculators on the web.
We searchers tend to have a bias toward text. We search for keywords, and expect documents as results. Sure, we can also find things like images, music, multimedia and spreadsheets using search engines. But what about those times when we need to calculate an answer using numbers? No search engine is going to help you with that.
And yet there are literally thousands of specialized calculators available on the web. Calculators that help you test your soil, compute your taxes, add the right amount of yeast to your homebrew, plot your biorhythm -- there's even a warp speed calculator for Star Trek fans.
The Calculators Online Center has links to more than 15,000 specialized calculators. The resource is divided into four parts. Part 1 is an alphabetical list, organized by topic. Part 2 features only mathematics and statistics calculators.
Part 3 focuses on science. There's an alphabetical list organized by scientific discipline, and two subsets of calculators related to chemistry and physics, and astrophysics.
Part 4 is dedicated to engineering, with an alphabetical list of all engineering disciplines, and a subset dealing specifically with Electrical & Computer engineering applications.
If you're looking for a calculator for a specific problem, start your search with the Calculators Online Center. The pages are very long, so once they've loaded use your browser's "find" command to search within the pages themselves. To access the "find" command, press Control-F, or use your browser's "search, find" menu commands.
Calculators On-Line Center
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html
More than 15,000 calculators covering virtually every specialized type of calculation imaginable.
Martindale's The Reference Desk
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/Ref.html
One of the web's best-kept secrets. A highly personal web directory with more than 25,000 pages maintained by Jim Martindale, self-professed "old man of the net - over 23," inventor, scientist, and tireless cataloger of interesting and useful web sites.
NOTE: Article links often change. In case of a bad link, use the publication's search facility, which most have, and search for the headline.
