Include formula for all conversions

[degant]

Problem Statement

The problem statement is that I'm performing conversion between 2 units, for example 8 ml to ounces. I open up the volume converter, select the desired units and enter 8. I get the output in ounces but now I look at the two numbers and find myself wondering what is the formula to get oz from ml. So I need to edit my input to 1 and try and figure out a relation between these two. May check inputs and outputs for 1, 10, 100 and notice that they are related by a certain factor.

While most conversions might have a relationship based on multiplying or dividing a certain factor, this may not be true for all conversions. For example Celsius to Fahrenhiet or similar. Thus making it hard for a user to figure out the conversion & relationship.

The idea is to allow users to use converters even as a lookup in-case they don't how 2 units are inter-related.

Evidence or User Insights

On searching the web, we can find thousands of results, website with tables, conversions, formulas, discussions on converting various units from one to another. The idea is to make it more informational to use conversions.

Proposal

The proposal is to include the formula for every conversion, similar to how it is done for currency conversions so that the user is aware of the conversion being performed and doesn't need to look it up or try and deduce it.

Goals

Users should be able to look at conversions without the need for opening up the web and searching for the conversion formula for any two units, similar to how users can directly check currency conversion rates live within the Calculator app.

Low-Fidelity Concept

Google

Bing

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[HowardWolosky]

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[grochocki]

@degant Thanks for the feature suggestion! This is really well thought-out, and we really appreciate it. Let's keep this idea open for discussion so the community has the chance to provide feedback. Check out our New Feedback Process for more info on the user-centered process we follow for new feature development.

[I-Campbell]

This should always be in the format: Property (unit converting to) = function( Property (unit converting from))

Eg: 1 Kelvin

-272.15 Degrees celcius Temperature (°C) = Temperature (K) - 273.15

[grochocki]

We reviewed the pitch and would love to move forward with it! I think this pitch is a great start, but there are still some open questions. Moving this into planning to iron out some of the details.

A couple examples:

• What is the best way to present formulas consistently accross different converters?
• Formulas should work great regardless of locale, so we should ensure our approach works great globally (i.e., BiDi support and accurate translations).

I created calculator-specs/converterformulas to track progress. For more information on next steps, check out our spec workflow.