InquireB has five functions. It can function in two modes.
A small floating Desk Accessory to which you can drag and drop inquires (see picture right)
A full featured Application (see picture below).
The basic functionality is simple.
- Run the Installer to install the XML files in the appropriate location.
- Launch InquireB
- An introductory window opens with a picture of a target on the upper left ( see figure on upper left). This introduces you to Inquire's two modes of operation and invites you to click the target
- The Window changes its appearance. It now shows what Inquire looks like in its Application mode. You can click on the various buttons, tabs and menus to learn how it works.
- When finished you can dismiss this window forever and continue to the actual application or simply continue to the application.
- All necessary instructions are integrated into the Inquire application itself.
- To Quit Inquire simply use the close button at the top
---The following details contain some additional information generally not needed or required for the operation of InquireB---
| + and - | addition and subtraction |
| * and / | multiplication and division |
| ^ | exponentiation(power) 2^3 = 8 3^2 = 9 16^0.5 = 4 |
| Precedence (of operators) | ^ (power) before * (multiplication) or / (division) next + (add) or - (subtract) last Operations of equal rank are evaluated left to right. Thus: 2*3/6=1 or 2/3*6=4 If you are unsure use parentheses. Thus, (2+4)/6 = 1 while 2+4/6 = 2.666667 and 2*3^2 = 18 but (2*3)^2 = 36 |
| Number | You can enter numbers like:
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| Scientific Notation | You can also use scientific notation in this form:
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| Constants | You can use PI for the number 3.14159265358979323846264338327950 |
| Trig Functions |
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| Inverse Trig Functions |
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| Exponential Function | For e2 use exp(2) For e-2 use exp(-2) |
| Log Function | log(#), where 0<# |
| Square Root Function | sqrt(#) where # is positive |
| Absolute Value Function | abs(-2)= 2 |
| Factorial | 4! = 24 |
| Formatting your Answer |
Normally the calculator returns 7 digits. If your answer is 123456 the calculator will return 123456 However if your answer is a large or small number, e.g., If your answer is 123456789 the calculator will return 1.234568e+8 or If your answer is .00123456789 the calculator will return 0.0012346 In each case only 7 digits are returned Note: A very small number like .000001234567 will return 1.234567e-6 There are times when you might need more precision. If so, go to the settings (see picture above) and choose for Format the radio button "Scientific". This will give you 14 digits. S0 - 123456789 now gives 1.23456789e+8 The problem with using this Format is a simple answer, such as "2" will be reported as 2.0e+0 |
| Angles | Angles are properly measured in Radians. Commonly, angles are measured in degrees. The relationship is 180o = PI/2. The calculator by default uses radians. So sin(PI/4) = 0.707.., and Asin(.707..) = PI/4 (0.785...)
You can use the Settings to change to degrees, where, sin(45) = 0.707... and asin(0.707...) = 45. |
| Log Functions | The two common logarithms are "Base 10"(used in Sound Intensity among others) and "Base e" (widely used in science). "Base e" is the default but it can be changed in the Settings. |
| Purge Pretty | Some types of documents format symbols with special characters which look like keyboard characters but look 'prettier'. They will cause problems. Purge Pretty tries to convert these to the appropriate keyboard character. See Possible Problems below. |
| Numbers |
Numbers should include only
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| Mathematical Expressions for Evaluation. | As with numbers avoid spaces and all characters not listed above except for:
Do not trust minus signs. If there is a minus sign in an expression and when you drag it to Inquire (in Desk Accessory mode) and don't receive a beep, or copy and paste in application mode with no result, the problem is probably the minus sign. Web pages and possibly other sources can give rise to this problem. Sometimes Copy Editors and others concerned with appearance will replace the minus sign/hyphen "-" with an EM DASH (emdash) "—" or EN DASH (endash) "–". These will not be recognized as a minus sign. If you have selected "Purge Pretty" in the settings, Inquire will automatically attempt to correct these submissions plus correct other non ASCII additions, such as, a multiplication sign, ×, instead of the letter 'x'. Another problem can be caused by accidentally including invisible characters. This can happen in two ways.
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| Inverse Trig Functions | The inverse trigonometric functions are not single valued, which means that in some cases there may be more than one answer. For example, both the tangent of 45o and 225o are equal to 1. The inverse tangent will return only the smallest angle, in this case, 45o. The same is true for the sine and cosine. If this is important the user must determine the proper quadrant on their own. (For those familiar with scripting and using radians the function atan2(x,y) can solve this problem.) |
| Other Problems | None known as of this time. |
| Go to Settings in the menu and the application expands to show the settings area. Once there, in the upper drop down menu (shown at right), choose the proper category. |  |
Once you choose a category the second drop down menu will change to that category. See example at the right where the general category pressure has been selected. From the second menu choose the pressure conversion you want to use. Drag and Drop the number you want to convert to it and at the beep paste the converted number with units into your document. Note: If you make no change, that is, the top choice in the second menu already showing is the one you want to use, you will have to manually change the menu at the upper left to "convert." |
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| Numbers | The same restrictions apply here as they do in the Calculator mode. Avoid commas, and spaces. Use the digits, decimal sign ".", + or -, and "e" if the number is in scientific notation. Again, beware of minus signs copied from web pages. |
| Conversions | Although it would seem to be unlikely, many conversions are contested. For example by International agreement the inch is exactly 2.54 centimeter, yet books that use this might list the conversions between the kilometer and the mile which are not consistent with this. Google and Yahoo list different values for the light-year, both of which are different from that recommended by the International Astronomical Union, and is used here. The different values result from a different length used for the Earth year. Such differences are common and almost always insignificant for most uses. One notable exception is the "Drop." 1 mL might be given as anywhere from 12 to 20 drops depending on the surface tension of the liquid and/or the optimism of the vendor. |
| Settings | The only consideration here is whether to a smart search or a literal search. If you are looking for the 'radius moon', that would be a literal search term and should give you what you want. However if you are dragging and dropping from a web page or a pdf document what you may have is 'the radius of the moon' dropped on Inquire. If you have Smart Search selected Inquire will attempt to render this into proper literal search terms. In the application mode the search term combinations are defined for you. |
| Input/Output | For maximum compatibility all output is in ASCII. That is. what can be typed on your keyboard using only the shift key as a modifier. For example, on many keyboards the ALT/OPTION-G key (Thus the G key modified by the ALT key)) combination will produce ©. This is not part of the standard ASCII and will not be used.
Because of this restriction subscripts are denoted by [ ], thus 'A subscript 0' will be written as A[0]. A superscript will be represented by '^', thus meter squared will be m^2. For the same reason greek letters will be spelled out as in:
NOTE: Search not case sensitive. |
| Physical Data | Searching for 'mass' will will find all available mass data. Searching for electron will return all available data on the 'electron' Searching from 'electron mass' will return the mass of the electron only. Avoid searches with punctuation, the only exception is when used with a proper name such as 'Coulomb's constant' If this search does not work try it after removing the apostrophe "s". Basic data on the Moon, Earth, and Sun can be found here. [More extensive information is available in the Astronomy database.] There are around 300 entries of physical datum available. Some key word search terms. The lists are not exhaustive. And not needed in the Application mode.
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| [Astronomy Data] | Use Drag and drop to search for SUN or MOON or EARTH to find extensive data on each.
NOTE: Search not case sensitive.
To find out about the moons of a planet, you can search for the moon by name or find the names by searching for the planet by name and the word moon, for example, NEPTUNE MOON To find data on stars, search for STARS MAGNITUDE to obtain a list of stars ranked by magnitude. The stars with more information available will be indicated in that list and you can then search by the star name. Finally to obtain information on a planet search for it by name. |
