Calculate like a scientist.

I owned a CASIO fx-992s calculator. I bought it 5 years ago. Not exactly knowing what I should be doing with it anyway. I have to sit for my calculus paper, and I need to have a calculator so I went to the nearest available shop, and grab one. It was 7.30 in the morning and luckily this electronic shop had their doors open a little bit, and I just barged in! (Or perhaps they just wanted to clean up their shop before normal business? Normal opening time is around 10am though)

There I was, inside the examination hall, with this brand new calculator in one hand and an inch thick manual on the other. I spent half of my time, understanding the features and functions of the calculators rather than concentrating on my calculus. (No wonder I failed mine...)

After 5 years, I am pretty used up my calculators, just to do my income tax sheets, or calculating how much I need to spend for my groceries, or adding up all these numbers on my spreadsheet. Some buttons already faded away, a true sign of heavily used calculator but nevertheless, only limited to the plus, minus, divide and multiply buttons. (I can't really see my '0' button... must be because all that 6 figure numbers that I need to update).

How about this other buttons that sits on the upper side of my calculator? Aren't they supposed to be for something? They sit pretty high up... they must be important, right? Why else can they be there? With all this weird signs, hyp, sin, cos, tan, MR, M+... is this some kind of alien communication device?

According to Wikipedia, a scientific calculator is a type of electronic calculator, usually but not always handheld, designed to calculate problems in science (especially physics), engineering, and mathematics. They have almost completely replaced slide rules in almost all traditional applications, and are widely used in both education and professional settings.

So the main function of this calculator is basically to calculate some quantum physic stuff... or something about trigonometry numbers (because before this they have to manually refer to a table)... and pretty much all basic calculation needed. It seems that this is the kind of calculator that an engineer, or scientist, or architect needs to have.

Why don't we look into some of the available scientific calculators in the market?

Yup! I think they just can't stand it when Steve Jobs make a very simple to use device such as iPhone. They really need to add something complicated into it and make my life miserable.

The latest iPhone 3G is now with the scientific calculator embedded into it. On upright position, the calculator will appear in it's basic format. And if you tilted your head, urm... your iPhone, it will show you all those little buttons that the normal scientific calculator has.... what a freaky sight.