How it works
Through one base unit
Every category has a base unit: metres, kilograms, kelvin, bytes, metres per second, litres, square metres, seconds and pascals. Each unit is stored as a factor to that base, plus an offset for the temperature scales.
A value is turned into the base unit, then out of it into the unit you want, so all units in the list come from the same number and agree with each other.
result = (value × factor_from + offset_from − offset_to) ÷ factor_to
How results are written
Results keep up to four decimals. A value below 0.0001, one that would lose digits at four decimals, or one of a billion and up is written as a number times a power of ten, such as 6.2×10⁻⁴. Copy result puts ten significant digits on the clipboard, without grouping.
Quick reference shows what one of each unit is in the other. For temperatures it shows the formula instead, because the scales do not start at the same zero.
Picking units
Choose the two units in the From and To menus, or pick rows in the list: the first pick sets From, the next sets To. Picking the unit that is already on the other side swaps the pair. The arrow keys and the minus and plus buttons step the value by one, or by a tenth below one; temperatures stop at absolute zero and other quantities at zero.
