Good Scientific Calculators
Archiver
Posts: 46,084
Hi Guys:
Could not help but comment on this one.
Wal-mart and everyone else sells good scientific calculators that do all the
basic functions, conversions (binary, octal, decimal, hex conversions),
statistics, polar to rectangular, etc. for around $10-20. I bought one last
summer at a five and dime in The Pas, Manitoba (good fishing country) for
$9.99 in Canadian funds.
Therefore you can get good, cheap calculators that will do the trick quite
nicely. I think paying over $100 for a graphing calculator is a waste of $
since I use basic calculus to chart out a polynomial graph. Combined with
the power of computer programs (excel) I usually find I do not need one.
On the subject of slide rules and other antiquated devices:
a. My grade 12 math class at Lorne Jenken High School in Barrhead, Alberta
was the last class to learn how to use log tables that were over 25 years
old at the time. That was 1983. My calculus course that year used books that
were published in 1957. We got to keep these as souvenirs as they were going
to be replaced. Great gifts.
b. I am self-taught on the slide rule and used it in a university final exam
in 1987 when my calculator bit the dust. Cute story. The professor walked up
and asked what I was doing and I told him that I was using my "back up
calculator." He picked it up, chuckled and replied, "Haven't used one of
these in over 10 years. Be right back." He then walked back to the front,
pulled out his own calculator and lent it to me to finish the exam. He
politely told me to put the slide rule away. Now here's the funny part: this
transaction took about 2 minutes; all that while everyone had stopped
writing the exam to look at what was going on. Meanwhile I had kept right on
working. What a way to ride the bell curve.
c. For a 36 year old electrical engineer, I am also self-taught on the care,
feeding and use of vacuum tubes. I still have my dad's air force manuals and
books on vacuum tube theory when he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force in
the 1960's. An older electrical engineer (1968 vintage) gave me his tube
textbooks as well.
Does this have anything to do with stamps? Indirectly yes. This interest in
"stuff" at an early age led me to begin basic computer programming on a
TRS-80 back in 1980. It was only in the last five years that I went back to
basic programming when I discovered the stamps. The really scary part was
that I had forgotten very little of the programming I had done and the
learning curve was not really all that steep.
This site has also been a great help.
Just my two cents worth.
Gerry Shand
gwshand@c...
Message: 25
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 15:13:31 -0700
From: Mike Walsh <walsh@c...>
Subject: Re: Re: IR/555 Timer Question????
Sid,
1971 started as an engineering tech as I finished my degree. Been here
since. One of these days I'll leave and get a real job.
I was reminded about not being able to use calculators in college. I had an
AC theory class final and my boss offered to loan me his HP35 (first
scientific / RPN calculator) for the exam. WOW! I was going to skate
through this one! No, my professor nailed me before the exam started and
told me to pull out my Log-Log K&E. Gee, I miss those days ..............
not!
Mike
At 05:46 PM 6/29/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>For walsh@caltech
>
>Boy, you must be almost as old as I am.
>
>Sid
>
>To UNSUBSCRIBE, just send mail to:
> basicstamps-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>from the same email address that you subscribed with. Text in the Subject
>and Body of the message will be ignored.
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
_________________________________
Mike Walsh
walsh@i...
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Could not help but comment on this one.
Wal-mart and everyone else sells good scientific calculators that do all the
basic functions, conversions (binary, octal, decimal, hex conversions),
statistics, polar to rectangular, etc. for around $10-20. I bought one last
summer at a five and dime in The Pas, Manitoba (good fishing country) for
$9.99 in Canadian funds.
Therefore you can get good, cheap calculators that will do the trick quite
nicely. I think paying over $100 for a graphing calculator is a waste of $
since I use basic calculus to chart out a polynomial graph. Combined with
the power of computer programs (excel) I usually find I do not need one.
On the subject of slide rules and other antiquated devices:
a. My grade 12 math class at Lorne Jenken High School in Barrhead, Alberta
was the last class to learn how to use log tables that were over 25 years
old at the time. That was 1983. My calculus course that year used books that
were published in 1957. We got to keep these as souvenirs as they were going
to be replaced. Great gifts.
b. I am self-taught on the slide rule and used it in a university final exam
in 1987 when my calculator bit the dust. Cute story. The professor walked up
and asked what I was doing and I told him that I was using my "back up
calculator." He picked it up, chuckled and replied, "Haven't used one of
these in over 10 years. Be right back." He then walked back to the front,
pulled out his own calculator and lent it to me to finish the exam. He
politely told me to put the slide rule away. Now here's the funny part: this
transaction took about 2 minutes; all that while everyone had stopped
writing the exam to look at what was going on. Meanwhile I had kept right on
working. What a way to ride the bell curve.
c. For a 36 year old electrical engineer, I am also self-taught on the care,
feeding and use of vacuum tubes. I still have my dad's air force manuals and
books on vacuum tube theory when he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force in
the 1960's. An older electrical engineer (1968 vintage) gave me his tube
textbooks as well.
Does this have anything to do with stamps? Indirectly yes. This interest in
"stuff" at an early age led me to begin basic computer programming on a
TRS-80 back in 1980. It was only in the last five years that I went back to
basic programming when I discovered the stamps. The really scary part was
that I had forgotten very little of the programming I had done and the
learning curve was not really all that steep.
This site has also been a great help.
Just my two cents worth.
Gerry Shand
gwshand@c...
Message: 25
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 15:13:31 -0700
From: Mike Walsh <walsh@c...>
Subject: Re: Re: IR/555 Timer Question????
Sid,
1971 started as an engineering tech as I finished my degree. Been here
since. One of these days I'll leave and get a real job.
I was reminded about not being able to use calculators in college. I had an
AC theory class final and my boss offered to loan me his HP35 (first
scientific / RPN calculator) for the exam. WOW! I was going to skate
through this one! No, my professor nailed me before the exam started and
told me to pull out my Log-Log K&E. Gee, I miss those days ..............
not!
Mike
At 05:46 PM 6/29/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>For walsh@caltech
>
>Boy, you must be almost as old as I am.
>
>Sid
>
>To UNSUBSCRIBE, just send mail to:
> basicstamps-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>from the same email address that you subscribed with. Text in the Subject
>and Body of the message will be ignored.
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
_________________________________
Mike Walsh
walsh@i...
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Comments
as long as this is show and tell on old stuff - then I'll tell mine
I "built" a rotary slide rule modeled after a E6B
It was designed to do a specific calculation. Calculate the speed of a car
based on its skid length. It used as input the coef of friction and the skid
length to calculate the entry speed of the vehicle. Of course any variable
could be solved for if you knew two of the other inputs. I built the dials
with Autocad and print them out on card stock. I am an engineer and include
one of these little "give away" calculators to my prospective clients
(attorneys). The calculator is completely accurate to 3 significant digits
keeping in mind the assumptions of constant mass, constant coef of friction,
constant deceleration, etc.
It was a fun project to build, fun calculator to use, fun to play with log
scaling. Nice refresher to remember things I had forgotten. (The calculation
it performs is v=(2*mu*g*d)^1/2, multiplication was easy but raising to a
power was a little more difficult!)
if anyone is interested I will be happy to email them a .jpeg so they can
print it out on your own printer.
Richard
Original Message
From: "Shand, Gerry W., Celanese/CA" <gwshand@c...>
To: <basicstamps@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 10:18 AM
Subject: [noparse][[/noparse]basicstamps] RE:Good Scientific Calculators
> Hi Guys:
>
> Could not help but comment on this one.
>
> Wal-mart and everyone else sells good scientific calculators that do all
the
> basic functions, conversions (binary, octal, decimal, hex conversions),
> statistics, polar to rectangular, etc. for around $10-20. I bought one
last
> summer at a five and dime in The Pas, Manitoba (good fishing country) for
> $9.99 in Canadian funds.
>
> Therefore you can get good, cheap calculators that will do the trick quite
> nicely. I think paying over $100 for a graphing calculator is a waste of $
> since I use basic calculus to chart out a polynomial graph. Combined with
> the power of computer programs (excel) I usually find I do not need one.
>
> On the subject of slide rules and other antiquated devices:
>
> a. My grade 12 math class at Lorne Jenken High School in Barrhead, Alberta
> was the last class to learn how to use log tables that were over 25 years
> old at the time. That was 1983. My calculus course that year used books
that
> were published in 1957. We got to keep these as souvenirs as they were
going
> to be replaced. Great gifts.
>
> b. I am self-taught on the slide rule and used it in a university final
exam
> in 1987 when my calculator bit the dust. Cute story. The professor walked
up
> and asked what I was doing and I told him that I was using my "back up
> calculator." He picked it up, chuckled and replied, "Haven't used one of
> these in over 10 years. Be right back." He then walked back to the front,
> pulled out his own calculator and lent it to me to finish the exam. He
> politely told me to put the slide rule away. Now here's the funny part:
this
> transaction took about 2 minutes; all that while everyone had stopped
> writing the exam to look at what was going on. Meanwhile I had kept right
on
> working. What a way to ride the bell curve.
>
> c. For a 36 year old electrical engineer, I am also self-taught on the
care,
> feeding and use of vacuum tubes. I still have my dad's air force manuals
and
> books on vacuum tube theory when he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force in
> the 1960's. An older electrical engineer (1968 vintage) gave me his tube
> textbooks as well.
>
> Does this have anything to do with stamps? Indirectly yes. This interest
in
> "stuff" at an early age led me to begin basic computer programming on a
> TRS-80 back in 1980. It was only in the last five years that I went back
to
> basic programming when I discovered the stamps. The really scary part was
> that I had forgotten very little of the programming I had done and the
> learning curve was not really all that steep.
>
> This site has also been a great help.
>
> Just my two cents worth.
>
> Gerry Shand
> gwshand@c...
>
>
>
>
> Message: 25
> Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 15:13:31 -0700
> From: Mike Walsh <walsh@c...>
> Subject: Re: Re: IR/555 Timer Question????
>
> Sid,
> 1971 started as an engineering tech as I finished my degree. Been here
> since. One of these days I'll leave and get a real job.
>
> I was reminded about not being able to use calculators in college. I had
an
> AC theory class final and my boss offered to loan me his HP35 (first
> scientific / RPN calculator) for the exam. WOW! I was going to skate
> through this one! No, my professor nailed me before the exam started and
> told me to pull out my Log-Log K&E. Gee, I miss those days ..............
> not!
> Mike
>
>
> At 05:46 PM 6/29/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> >For walsh@caltech
> >
> >Boy, you must be almost as old as I am.
> >
> >Sid
> >
> >To UNSUBSCRIBE, just send mail to:
> > basicstamps-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> >from the same email address that you subscribed with. Text in the
Subject
> >and Body of the message will be ignored.
> >
> >
> >Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
> _________________________________
> Mike Walsh
> walsh@i...
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, just send mail to:
> basicstamps-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> from the same email address that you subscribed with. Text in the Subject
and Body of the message will be ignored.
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>