While Blizzard Internet is all about giving you a great return on your investment with us, we also have quite a bit of experience with search engines and how an end user can get more out of them. In that vein, I will be creating a series of “How to Google” that will gives our readers a chance to learn and use the handy things that are built into Google Search and Google Tools. Hopefully, if you readers find it useful, I will move on to explain Yahoo and MSN LIVE. There is a lot to Google, so it may take a while to get through it.

To start with we should begin with Google’s basic homepage and the search box in the middle. We all know we can type a search word or phrase in that box and Google will show us the websites that their servers think are most relevant to your query. That is not the end though! Google was created by two Stanford (almost) P.H.D.’s, so of course they built in a very functional calculator among other tools.

You can use the search box to do basic math like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. We can build a simple equation like (2+1)x(7-4)/3 and the answer shows up like this. As you can see it even corrected my equation by putting more brackets in the appropriate place. Although this is the same as any calculator you can buy at Wal-Mart, they even programmed in things like Trig functions and Logarithmic Functions. Instead of buying that expensive T.I. Voyage calculator, you can just use Google. This is not the end of the calculator function.

Let’s take for instance that you want to know the Mass of the Sun for your child’s science fair project. Just type “Mass of the Sun” into the search box. Your answer comes up and looks like this:

That’s pretty handy! In fact, Google has lots of different constants calculated. If you need to know the Radius of Mars or Planck’s Constant it’s easy enough to find.

You can also ask Google some interesting and pointless question that might be brought up by a late night Star Trek binge like, “the speed of light/gravitational constant“, and Google will give you an answer something like this.

Pretty cool so far. But really, what use is knowing what the Electric Constant is to someone who didn’t know there was such a thing (like me). That’s why the fine engineers over at the Googleplex added in some other great functionality. Converting 18 tablespoons into cups could be really useful in a pinch (pun intended). They have included Everything from currency conversion to temperature scales like Fahrenheit and Celsius. You can even find out how many hectares there are in 20 square miles.

Now that you know that Google can do this, what you really need are some links to great tools that have already been built that you can take advantage of. Here is a guide that tells you almost all of the functions, constants, and abilities of the calculator.

To sum up; Google P.H.D.’s (sorta) + Calculator = Internet Gold.

Josh Green - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

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Categories: How To: Tips & Tools.
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