Stepping down from an advanced calculator

1. mindheavy

61
This is kind of sad, but I'm beginning to realize how much I rely on my graphing calculator any more for solving equations and whatnot. I am trying to incorporate a much simpler calculator from time to time (CASIO fx-260) and am struggling with some very basic operations.

Say I have the equation $\tau_A=\frac{5kN\cdot.040}{\frac{\pi}{2}\cdot(.04^4)}$ and I want to input this without using parenthesis. What is the order to type this in the calculator with?

2. Office_Shredder

4,500
Staff Emeritus
If you have a calculator that won't track order of operations for you, and I have one that let's you type it out on the screen to confirm it's correct, I would just go with the latter and restrict myself to only using it for basic calculations.

As for your guy, I would start with .04, raise it to the power of 4, multiply by pi, divide by 2, hit the "1/x" key, then multiply by all the stuff in the numerator consecutively. The thing I would be worried about when entering this expression into the calculator is if I try to do divide by, then enter .04, then raise to the 4th power, that it would divide by .04 before raising everything I have so far to the 4th power (some calculators will recognize a Pemdas violation I believe, but some won't).

3. mindheavy

61
Thanks, following the order you laid out got the correct answer. I hadn't thought of doing the denominator then reciprocating it to multiply by the numerator, but I see it now!

4. verty

1,819
Use those bracket buttons, for example, numerator / ( .... ) =

Oh sorry, you said without using parentheses. Odd :).