Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire inane thread of the day - engineering nerds

I used to use both of those, I even moved up to an HP33S briefly.

Now I just use this:



I can perform several statistical calculations, unit conversions, and program basic conversions from millibars to PSI/ inches of mercury, etc.

Yep... That'll do 99.9% of everything I have to do nowadays. And something on my 'puter will do the rest.

I have two 15C calculators, one from school and one from work. Always had a PC at work and never needed graphing capability on my calculator. I worked at HP for the last 33 years and could have any of their calculators, I tried several others but stuck with the 15C. Once you learn to run it with two thumbs there is no going back to jabbing with an index finger.

My slide rule was made of bamboo. It was a hand me down from my dad who had used it at Georgia Tech in the late 30's. That thing was smooth. I got pretty fast with it in school, but I never saw it smoking like some talked about.

I was at Georgia Tech when the Professors had the battle between the calculators and slide rules. Calculators won. All of a sudden the Profs were saying that you couldn't pass their course unless you used a calculator that had at least a working stack in it. My HP-21 set me back $135.00 that I didn't have to spare at the time. I still carried the slide rule when taking an exam because I didn't completely trust the batteries in the calculators. I only had to use it once and it was worth its weight in gold when the calculator died on me in a physics final.

Yep was tapping on my Hp 11C at work today from about 1983. RPN rules, embrace the stack!

LEFT!!!

TI89 here, use it every day. Could never get used to the damn RPN...

got the exact same one in my desk at work but i'm not an engineer.

I have/use a HP 15c I found on a job site many years ago.

I also still have my Dad's slide rule I used for HS physics.

Kids now adays use Ti 86; Ti 87?

You can operate these things with two thumbs? The things I learn here . . .

I haven't even graduated to that method on my iPhone (yet). My kids tease me about that. Gotta work on my skillz.

Once you go RPN, you never go back. Through college used a Ti-92, which was huge and very powerful. Once I was hired at my engineering firm, I was challenged to a calculator duel with one of the older engineers here, who was using an older HP. I got obliterated, and soon invested in an HP.

I used a HP48 for a while, but got really tired of out-punching it (having to wait for the calculations in the stack to catch up), so I bought a HP35s. I almost feel naked without it.

I started with the 11C, that darn 15C was outrageously high. The 41 series was a dream machine. Then the 48 came out, I thought God himself must have blessed mankind for some reason. The 3 48GX's I hoard will hopefully get me to the eventual dirt nap stage.

RPN- Reverse Polish Notation, I know it sounds like an enthic slur, but it's the way to go, believe me.

One problem with RPN, once you "learn it" your mind thinks mathematics in that order and you appear to be an idiot when handed a $5 TI POS, or try to use your calculator on your phone.

Mike

typical engineer.smart as a whip,but cant take a focused picture.

I use my TI-85 everyday.........never could get use to the reverse notation input of an HP.

RPN? And speak like Yoda you do. The only advantage I ever saw for RPN was that it was easy to parse on a minimalist processor with very little stack space. Sort of offloading the parser to your brain.

I've still got the pocket calculator that I bought when I entered the apprentice program.

Damn. Tough crowd.

It's the cell phone's fault.

I'm much better with a polaroid

And an original case of carpal tunnel.

I use plain old pencil & paper , as you can see it works just fine ;




Now , what y'all gonna do when your fancy machines get zapped with one of them EMPs ??


Mike

Count our fingers and toes. And get naked if we need to carry any digits.

I don't want to know how your going to square root.

(no relation to Larry Root)