17 Unique Searches You Can Perform With Wolfram Alpha
When you think of “searching on the internet”, the first thing that comes to mind is Bing (just kidding, obviously). However, for several years, there has been a different search engine called Wolfram Alpha- an engine which, when searching for something, instead of bringing you to the website of your result, will “compute” it and bring you the answer you wanted directly.
In this article we will present you 17 unique searches you can perform with it, which highlight its impressive features.
Wolfram Alpha is created by Wolfram Research, the developer company of Mathematica. If you learn how to use it, it can become your biggest ally in your “cognitive” internet searches.
- Comparisons
- Nutritional information
- Where am I?
- How many days until…
- Create password
- Am I drunk?
- How common is a name?
- Am I fat?
- Word questions
- Apply image filters to any image using text
- Solve complex (and simple) equations
- Convert numbers to ancient pictograms
- Find historical events
- Convert to Morse code
- Create Custom CAPTCHAs
- How many things can fit inside other things
- Play with Wolfram’s Image Finder
1. Comparisons
Typing in the search bar two terms with the word “vs” between them, the page will compare their characteristics.
For example, if you want compare Apple and Microsoft, simply type Apple vs Microsoft.
Similar comparisons can be made between books, websites, movies, food, and anything else you can imagine.
2. Nutritional information
Are you wondering how many calories does your breakfast have? A plain search for “oats with milk” will display all the nutritional details about it (and any other kind of food you want).
3. Where am I?
Asking “Where am I” the website will locate your exact location based on your IP address.
Similarly, you could enter an IP address an obtain information about it.
4. How many days until…
Can’t wait until next Christmas? A search for “days until Christmas” will show you how many days you are left. Of course, you can perform a “how many days until…” search for any other event.
5. Create password
If you want to generate a random password that is, say, 10 characters long, then Wolfram Alpha can do that for you- just type “10 character password” and hit enter.
6. Am I drunk?
For this information, the first step is to ask “Am I drunk?” so that a form will be displayed with some fields you need to fill.
So, filling them in with your own info, you will get the results, and a graph of how many hours it would take so that you will be able to drive legally again.
7. How common is a name?
Wondering how common your name is in the US? Searching for it will show you detailed statistics about it.
8. Am I fat?
Similarly to the “Am I drunk” search, you can type “Am I fat”, fill in the form with your information and see the results right away.
9. Word questions
Want to find out how many words begin with “X”? Just search for “words beginning with x”.
Do you want to know how many words you can get with the letters euyerib? Type “scrabble English euyerib”.
10. Apply image filters to any image using text
You can apply image filters (yes, image filters) to images, without even having to look for the images or use visual tools. Just text it.
Here is a list of some of the available image filters.
11. Solve complex (and simple) equations
Of course, we couldn’t expect less from the developers of Mathematica.
12. Convert numbers to ancient pictograms
You can see how a number is depicted in an ancient numerical system. To do this, type “[integer] to [Babylonian, Mayan, Roman, Greek, or Japanese abacus]” and hit enter.
13. Find historical events
Searching for any date or time period will return a list of important events that took place at that time.
14. Convert to Morse code
If you want to convert a phrase into Morse code, simply type “Morse code ‘[phrase]’”.
15. Create Custom CAPTCHAs
You can create a custom CAPTCHA by typing “CAPTCHA ‘[phrase]’” in the search box.
16. How many things can fit inside other things
Yes, this super-intelligent search engine can do tell you how many of something can fit inside something else. For example, you can finally find out how many pieces of A4 paper would cover the surface of the moon.
17. Play with Wolfram’s Image Finder
Last year, Wolfram introduced the ImageIdentify function, which tries to identify any image that you feed it.
Stephen Wolfram (founder and CEO of Wolfram Research) said in a blog post “It won't always get it right, but most of the time I think it does remarkably well. And to me what's particularly fascinating is that when it does get something wrong, the mistakes it makes mostly seem remarkably human.”
Go ahead and try it here- just drag any image into it and it will tell you what it think it is.
There are countless other things you can search for in this insane search engine, which we might cover in another article (this one would become really long if we included more of them!). If you want to share your own Wolfram searches, post them in the comments section below!
[Source: PCMag]
