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For instance:

http://www92.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=iss+rise+vancouver ...gives you the next ISS flyover for Vancouver, BC.

African or European.
Apparently there are too many species of african swallows for wolfram to answer.
However a European Swallow goes about that fast.

African or European.
Apparently there are too many species of african swallows for wolfram to answer.
However a European Swallow goes about that fast.

Dry ice stays solid if you drop it down the bottom of as little as few hundred feet (maybe less) under ocean water.

Not true, according to the phase diagram of carbon dioxide:

http://www69.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=carbon+dioxide

If we assume that the water in the desired depth of the ocean is at 273K (water's phase diagram shows clearly that the solid-liquid boundary is fairly constant around that temperature for a wide range of pressure, thus it's a lower bound), the pressure required to get liquid carbon dioxide is of 35 bar, or around 340 meters of water column (~1000 ft of depth). Still, liquid CO2 would mix with the water and would acidify it.

To get CO2 in a solid state would require over 3000 bar, or 30 kilometers of water column, assuming that the temperature of the water is 0C.

While your numbers are right, your conclusion is wrong. Gold has a density of 19.3g/cm^3 while lead has a density of 11.34g/cm^3.

How many of them do you suppose actually believed they had the dreaded H1N1 vs. those who believed were avoiding 7 days of needless confinement (under god knows what conditions) when they had "a cold". If you want people to comply with confinement, it needs to be under excellent conditions and you need to be credible enough that people will believe the reports on the conditions.

Doubly so considering that according to Alpha, we're at 36,000 cases worldwide serious enough to have been diagnosed and reported with 163 deaths. That's a 0.4% mortality rate from the "killer" flu. Typically, the total cases will be under-reported while the mortality rate is inflated (since the cases serious enough to end in death are much more likely to be detected). It's hard to take the 'urgent' need to turn oneself in for confinement seriously when the media and government panic is as big as it is while the actual stats are that mild.

Not to mention the likely MANY people who mis-understood and thought the airport had swine flu detectors. They would be pretty sure they just had a cold, so would take an aspirin figuring the magic swine-flu detectors would let them know if there was a problem.

I fully agree, people should stay home when sick. Further, employers shouldn't grumble about it (much better to have one person out sick today than 10 tomorrow). However, when traveling, it's all too possible to leave healthy and then get sick.

At this moment they still have not confirmed the 47th Mersenne prime in Alpha: 47th Mersenne prime

Further more, the 41st-46th primes are listed as conjectured.

If we consider the 40th Mersenne prime, 2^20996011-1 it gives the same result when checking its primeness (times out).

At this moment they still have not confirmed the 47th Mersenne prime in Alpha: 47th Mersenne prime

Further more, the 41st-46th primes are listed as conjectured.

If we consider the 40th Mersenne prime, 2^20996011-1 it gives the same result when checking its primeness (times out).

At this moment they still have not confirmed the 47th Mersenne prime in Alpha: 47th Mersenne prime

Further more, the 41st-46th primes are listed as conjectured.

If we consider the 40th Mersenne prime, 2^20996011-1 it gives the same result when checking its primeness (times out).

At least it tries to given an answer on the swallow question.

Here is a result which says true:

http://www29.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+3+a+prime+number

I guess it knows (2^n-1) can only be a prime number if n is prime (that's a known theorem).

Yes, I know that. :-)

What I'm saying is that is listed under "input". That indicates to me it was reformulating your English question into a proper mathematical statement. Nowhere do I see output.

Try it this way and you'll see what I'm looking for: http://www29.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+(2%5E42%2C643%2C800+-+1)+a+prime+number

The "input" statement is the same formulation, but there is now a "result" block which was missing from your query. That result states "False" as opposed to changing the element symbol to the not-an-element symbol (funny E with a line thru it, IIRC).

If you're right, and I'm wrong, then WA needs to fix their interface because it is unclear that it actually confirms your question or just gives up. I'd like to see a "Result" block that simply says "True", like it does with the false answer.

Not so much for a bear's activity in the woods, however...

This gives you the number, keep hitting 'More digits'. Unfortunately it gives it as an image so I can't copy paste here.

Well I don't know why it took 29 days for the computer to tell him it was so, wolfram alpha told me it was prime in ~1 second.

On that note, I asked Wolfram the other day the tree in a forest thing and I finally have an answer!

Well I don't know why it took 29 days for the computer to tell him it was so, wolfram alpha told me it was prime in ~1 second.

On that note, I asked Wolfram the other day the tree in a forest thing and I finally have an answer!

$3 million in revenue from Twitter in the last two years, versus what I count as roughly $100 billion in revenue over the past two years for Dell. That's not enough to qualify as a drop in the bucket. If I were Dell, I would laugh in Twitter's face if they demanded money-- they'd probably generate just as many sales by slipping fliers under people's windshields in parking lots.

Just move to Turkey. Only 5 inches there.

Of course, you're probably in America, which will make you feel even worse.

Just move to Turkey. Only 5 inches there.

Of course, you're probably in America, which will make you feel even worse.

Well, at least it knows what the world's population per capita is!

The data it has access to only goes back to 1990: http://wolframalpha.com/input/?i=electricity+production+of+the+USA

This was the first suggested link on the "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input" page...

This gives a graph from 1995 to 2005. I don't think their data goes back farther, and I could not find a way to get the total.

Here is the one that I like to do.

Wolfram, You + Me = Us, correct?

WASearch

Wlfram Alpha answers the age-old question "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" correctly.

How about an esoteric question?

what is the distance between 89N 1W and 89N 2W ?

You really think business software is less than entertainment. Get a grip on reality. Your calculated revenue total was $33 Billion. Let's compare that to the 2008 annual revenue of some software companies (I used Wolfram Alpha for this, and it rocked).

Microsoft: $61.98B
EMC: $14.88B
Computer Sciences Corporation: $17.11B
Oracle: $23.53B
Accenture: $25.68B
SAP: $16.31B
Adobe: $3.6B
Intuit: $3.1B
Symantec: $6.22B

Here is a listing of what Alpha thinks the top 158 software companies are, with some pretty nifty charts too. Here is another website that lists the top 100 software companies by software revenue, which ranges from $48B to $228M. Even if you multiply the lowest by 100, you end up with $22.8B. Do you still think the entertainment business is bigger than the software business?

Gartner says more than a billion PCs are in use globally, and about 180 million PCs would be replaced in 2008. There are plenty of companies and people that pirate software in the United States, and massive numbers in places like China. The bottom line is, their numbers add up. I wouldn't be too surprised if there numbers are actually a little low.

http://www49.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-(d'+*+e^(i*pi))

If I had 100lbs of cocaine, I'd just buy a new car, screw the garage.

http://www55.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100+pounds+of+cocaine

I'd mould it into a sphere of radius .2 metres.

Meanwhile wolfram alpha doesn't know WTF the metric system is, never mind who uses it. http://www79.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=metric+system [wolframalpha.com]

Try this

Meanwhile wolfram alpha doesn't know WTF the metric system is, never mind who uses it. http://www79.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=metric+system [wolframalpha.com]

Try this

I beg to differ:

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/internat.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-118736013.html

Meanwhile wolfram alpha doesn't know WTF the metric system is, never mind who uses it.
http://www79.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=metric+system

Counter-nits:

US Airways Flight 1549 is recorded as an Airbus A320-214. The crusing speed of an A320 is Mach 0.78. Mach 0.78 is 593.7415 miles per hour, which is closer to 600 than 500, I believe. In holding with being a complete bastard, 91% of Mach 1 is 692.698416 miles per hour, fully 98.95 miles per hour more than your claim. (The speed of sound being 761.207051 miles per hour, for reference.)

You are correct about the rate-of-climb at the time of incident, though - it was grossly less than the cruse speed.

Also, nits - not nicks - are often picked, unless you're creating a new account.

What about using, instead of a grille, a cone in front of the engine? Think of a cow catcher, but much longer and more tapered: the idea is to deflect a bird away from the engine, not to actually stop the bird. If the cone is elongated enough, the tangential force imparted to the bird should be enough to deflect it without disintegrating it.

Human skin has a tensile strength of 7.5 MPa (i.e. 7.5 N/mm^2); birds should be similar. Skin can probably do better than this for brief periods. Consider a spherical, slightly elastic bird with negligible velocity that masses 9kg hitting an aircraft moving at 100 m/s (223 mph). If the bird accelerates to the speed of the aircraft in 0.1 seconds via a contact area of 10 square millimeters, then by the familiar F=MA equation, the bird experiences a force of 9,000 newtons distributed over those 10 square milliliters for a pressure of 900 MPa, and the bird explodes, sending bird-chunks into the engine.

However, if a bird hits the side of an 89 degree cone, then it doesn't need to accelerate to the speed of the aircraft, but can instead roll along the cone: in the instant the bird impacts the cone, it will need to accelerate in the forward direction by only cos(89 degrees), or 0.017 of the forward speed of the aircraft, or only 1.74 m/s, which in turn imparts a pressure of only 15.7 MPa: the bird is quite dead, but safely deflected away from the engine without disintegrating too badly.

And how come it's measured in some stupid space unit? It's a frequency so it wants hertz!

http://www19.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hubble+constant+in+hertz

It's called SI. Get with the program dudes.

Big time! Nothing makes a young lad more popular with the ladies than a degree in Astrophysics from a community college.

Hey ladies, my love is like T^2 = (4 pi^2 a^3)/(G (m_1+m_2))

...I copied the equation from Wolfram|Alpha...I'm smart like the kid said...at searching search engines.

Ross Perot's "sucking sound" referred to NAFTA, so if these IMBers were moving to Mexico that would make sense.

Notice that US Employment rose steadily from 1950 through 2007 with a few bumps along the way, even as the unemployment rate has vascilated wildly throughout. Basically, the US has been able to add a steady number of jobs each year regardless of labor conditions. If we hadn't moved people offshore, we still wouldn't see a jump in US employment. The rate for adding jobs looks like it's roughly the same whether the unemployment rate is 2% or 12%. I just don't see a giant suck.

On a side note, Wolfram Alpha's search engine turned out to be very useful looking for facts like these.

Ross Perot's "sucking sound" referred to NAFTA, so if these IMBers were moving to Mexico that would make sense.

Notice that US Employment rose steadily from 1950 through 2007 with a few bumps along the way, even as the unemployment rate has vascilated wildly throughout. Basically, the US has been able to add a steady number of jobs each year regardless of labor conditions. If we hadn't moved people offshore, we still wouldn't see a jump in US employment. The rate for adding jobs looks like it's roughly the same whether the unemployment rate is 2% or 12%. I just don't see a giant suck.

On a side note, Wolfram Alpha's search engine turned out to be very useful looking for facts like these.

Finally found a use for Wolfram Alpha:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Climate+of+Zhengzhou+china
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Climate+of+Yancheng+china

Finally found a use for Wolfram Alpha:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Climate+of+Zhengzhou+china
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Climate+of+Yancheng+china

I was hoping for some neat graphs from that, but Wolfram failed me: http://www41.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(3%2F16)+%C3%91^4+%C3%90^4+O+E

No data analysis! GS and WA are completely different beasts.

In Google Squared:

Try getting a square with the five largest countries by area. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for five largest countries by area)

Try to mathematically manipulate results like, say, dividing power usage of the united states by its population. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for united states electric production / population

Try to get GS to do anything like growth charts, ISS location calculations, morse code translation, puzzle solving, food calorie counting, differential equations.

Also the data is much less complete. Check out Google Squared's results for the escape velocities of the moons of Mars. Now check Wolfram|Alpha's. Yeah, there's a reason that WA is citable as a primary source.

No data analysis! GS and WA are completely different beasts.

In Google Squared:

Try getting a square with the five largest countries by area. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for five largest countries by area)

Try to mathematically manipulate results like, say, dividing power usage of the united states by its population. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for united states electric production / population

Try to get GS to do anything like growth charts, ISS location calculations, morse code translation, puzzle solving, food calorie counting, differential equations.

Also the data is much less complete. Check out Google Squared's results for the escape velocities of the moons of Mars. Now check Wolfram|Alpha's. Yeah, there's a reason that WA is citable as a primary source.

No data analysis! GS and WA are completely different beasts.

In Google Squared:

Try getting a square with the five largest countries by area. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for five largest countries by area)

Try to mathematically manipulate results like, say, dividing power usage of the united states by its population. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for united states electric production / population

Try to get GS to do anything like growth charts, ISS location calculations, morse code translation, puzzle solving, food calorie counting, differential equations.

Also the data is much less complete. Check out Google Squared's results for the escape velocities of the moons of Mars. Now check Wolfram|Alpha's. Yeah, there's a reason that WA is citable as a primary source.

The default result sets are more than useless - are laughable.
I searched for europe demographics and it automatically created a set of rows that was made of Gibraltar, Isle of Man and Faroe Islands; for columns it created Image, Description, Language, Capital and Currency. The same search on Wolfram Alpha produced clear, concise results.

Eventually, I could get good results on Squared too by starting with an empty square and adding rows and columns myself. Took about 10 minutes; I could have made a simple search to get the same results.

I realize Google-bashing is dangerous around here, but they definitely have to improve Squared if they want it to be useful.

WolframAlpha seems pretty dumb when it comes to guessing an appropriate unit, really. 1.499x10^-10 kWh?

To get it to spit out the result in joules, you have to put in:

electricity consumption of north america * 1 fs * (1 joule / (1 watt * 1 sec))

1 joule / (1 watt * 1 sec) is a big fraction that equals 1, in case you missed that.

I don't even want to try and figure out how to give the answer in watt-hours...

Google, on the other hand, doesn't know what the electricity consumption of North America is, but if you plug in

4.727*10^12 kilowatt hours per year * 1 femtosecond

it gives the answer in joules, as I'd expected.

Offtopic, but it seems being smart on the internet is becoming too easy: http://www36.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=electricity+consumption+of+north+america+*+1+femtosecond

Rather than the world factbook, you could've gone straight to wolfram|alpha.

http://www51.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=united+states+electric+production

(490.9 GW, yes, it also details the sources of its information)

Man, I should make a "just walpha it" site.

It's really amazing how any of us, and humanity in general, ever lived past their 10th birthday without all the 'safety' gear that is available now. What a truly wonderful time to be alive, we now finally have the tools to live on past childhood.

Life expectancy has dramatically increased in the last few decades.

http://www38.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+U.S.#scannerresult_0500_1

Wolfram is located a few blocks from me in Champaign Illinois

Or just do what I did and "wolfram Alpha it"* (well, that doesn't quite have the same ring too it).

* © 2009 Wolfram Alpha LLCâ"A Wolfram Research Company

Have you noticed, what sources did they use it to "compute" the result? "Fifty Years of Barbie" made the greatest impression on me.

Google is old hat - everyone who is anyone uses Wolfram Alpha. Alpha-ing "cost of keyboard" gives a price of $47.87 - although if it has a "market cap" (is that anything like caps lock?) the price skyrockets to $21.2 billion.

Just be glad you're looking at the cost of a keyboard instead of the actual value - according to Wolfram Alpha, the value of a keyboard is U+2328. Although I'm not sure what that is in US dollars, because "convert U+2328 to US dollars" doesn't seem to give anything helpful.

Dude, Alpha is so old school... these days we "bing" things... get with the times!