hoangpq / insect

High precision scientific calculator with support for physical units

A high precision scientific calculator with full support for physical units.

• Web version
• Terminal version

Documentation

• Evaluate mathematical expressions:

  1920/16*9
  2^32
  sqrt(1.4^2 + 1.5^2) * cos(pi/3)^2
  

  • Operators: addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*, ·, ×), division (/, ÷, per), exponentiation (^, **). Full list: see Reference below.

  • Mathematical functions: acos, acosh, asin, asinh, atan, atanh, ceil, cos, cosh, exp, floor, gamma, ln, log, log10, round, sin, sinh, sqrt, tan, tanh.

  • Arbitrary-precision numeric type that can handle very large (or small) exponents like 10^(10^10).

  • Exponential notation: 6.022e23.

• Physical units: parsing and handling, including metric prefixes:

  2 min + 30 s
  40 kg * 9.8 m/s^2 * 150 cm
  sin(30°)
  

  • Supported units: see Reference section below.

  • Implicit conversions: 15 km/h * 30 min evaluates to 7.5 km.

  • Useful error messages:

    > 2 watts + 4 newton meter
    
    Unification error:
      Cannot convert unit N·m (base units: kg·m²·s⁻²)
                  to unit W (base units: kg·m²·s⁻³)
    

• Explicit unit conversions: the -> conversion operator (aliases: →, to):

  60 mph -> m/s
  500 km/day -> km/h
  1 mrad -> degree
  52 weeks -> days
  5 in + 2 ft -> cm
  atan(30 cm / 2 m) -> degree
  6 Mbit/s * 1.5 h -> GB
  

• Variable assignments:

  r = 6000km
  vol = 4/3 * pi * r^3
  density = 5 g/cm^3
  vol * density -> kg
  

  len = 20 cm
  2pi*sqrt(len/g0) -> ms
  

  • Predefined constants (type list to see them all): speed of light (c), Planck's constant (h_bar), electron mass (electronMass), elementary charge (elementaryCharge), magnetic constant (µ0), electric constant (eps0), Bohr magneton (µ_B), Avogadro's constant (N_A), Boltzmann constant (k_B), gravitational acceleration (g0), ...

  • Last result: you can use ans (answer) to refer to the result of the last calculation.

• Unicode support:

  λ = 2 × 300 µm
  ν = c/λ → GHz
  

• And more: tab completion, command history (arrow keys, Ctrl+R), pretty printing, syntax highlighting, ...

Reference

• Operators (ordered by precedence: high to low)

  Operator	Syntax
  factorial	!
  square/cube	²/³
  exponentiation	^, **
  multiplication (implicit)	whitespace
  division	/, ÷, per
  multiplication (explicit)	*, ·, ×
  subtraction	-
  addition	+
  unit conversion	->, →, to
  assignment	=

  Note that implicit multiplication has a higher precedence than division, i.e. 50 cm / 2 m will be parsed as 50 cm / (2 m).

• Commands

  Command	Syntax
  help text	help, ?
  list of variables	list, ls, ll
  reset environment	reset
  clear screen	clear, cls
  quit (CLI)	quit, exit

• Supported units (remember that you can use tab completion). All SI-accepted units support metric prefixes.

  Unit	Syntax
  Ampere	amperes, ampere, A
  Ångström	angstrom, Å
  Astronomical unit	AU
  Bar	bar
  Barn	barn
  Becquerel	becquerel, Bq
  Bel	bel
  Bits per second	bps
  Bit	bits, bit
  Byte	Bytes, bytes, Byte, byte, B
  Candela	candela, cd
  Coulomb	coulomb, C
  Cup	cups, cup
  Day	days, day, d
  Degree	degrees, degree, deg, °
  Electronvolt	electronvolt, eV
  Farad	farad, F
  Foot	feet, foot, ft
  Gallon	gallons, gallon, gal
  Gauss	gauss
  Gram	grams, gram, g
  Gray	gray, Gy
  Hectare	hectare, ha
  Henry	henry, H
  Hertz	hertz, Hz
  Hour	hours, hour, h
  Inch	inches, inch, in
  Joule	joules, joule, J
  Katal	katal, kat
  Kelvin	kelvin, K
  Liter	liters, liter, L
  Lumen	lumen, lm
  Lux	lux, lx
  Meter	meters, meter, m
  Miles per hour	mph
  Mile	miles, mile
  Minute	minutes, minute, min
  Mole	mole, mol
  Month	months, month
  Newton	newton, N
  Ohm	ohms, ohm, Ω
  Ounce	ounces, ounce, oz
  Pascal	pascal, Pa
  Pint	pints, pint
  Pound	pounds, pound, lb
  Radian	radians, radian, rad
  Second	seconds, second, sec, s
  Siemens	siemens, S
  Sievert	sievert, Sv
  Tablespoon	tablespoons, tablespoon, tbsp
  Teaspoon	teaspoons, teaspoon, tsp
  Tesla	tesla, T
  Tonne	tonnes, tonne, tons, ton, t
  Volt	volts, volt, V
  Watt	watts, watt, W
  Watt-hour	Wh
  Weber	weber, Wb
  Week	weeks, week
  Yard	yards, yard, yd
  Year	years, year

Install terminal version

In addition to the web interface, there is also a command line version which can by installed via npm:

npm install -g insect

For Arch Linux, there is a package on AUR:

yaourt -S insect

For macOS, there is a Homebrew package:

brew install insect

Development

Insect is written in PureScript (see Getting Started guide). You can install all dependencies and build the whole project by running:

bower install
npm install
pulp -w browserify --skip-entry-point -m Insect --standalone Insect -O -t insect.js

Insect comes with a comprehensive set of unit tests. You can run them by calling

pulp test