First Month with 50g

[MarkMason]

(04-14-2015 02:03 PM)rogeriol Wrote:  

(04-09-2015 03:32 AM)MarkMason Wrote:  [font=Arial]Received the 50g about 5 weeks ago. I bought it as a retirement toy. Had I still been a working engineer I would probably have gone with a WP-34s or 35s, but wanted
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Mark

Funny. I got my first RPL calculator in 1990 (28S) also as a toy ......

And you got it as a retirement toy.

Yes, sounds a little funny but I found early retirement thrust upon me by a disability that requires me to be laying down 60+% of the time, outherwise I'd be out enjoying the countryside during the daytime. I hesitate to mention this, and do so only for explination, as I have many more things to be grateful for that offset this condition. Luckily I have the internet for amusement while my lady is at work all day, but there is only so many chimpanzee videos to watch on youtube. Fortunately my nurd tendencies open up whole areas of amusement, particuairly finding numbers to play with.

(04-14-2015 06:57 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  I wonder what 50g owners are doing with their machines for professional purposes. I purchased one for a hobby (I never had seen RPL before) and a very few manual calculations (price calculations most of the time...) at work. When things become serious, most people would switch on Excel and myself on C++.
Anything I do on the 50g is good fun but terribly inefficient. For my day to day work, a 35S is actually the best option, not the 50G. So I would be interested in some feedback from users regarding their professional use of the calculator (anything not related to education).

Since 1989 until a couple of years ago I used a HP-32S for work, still have it, still runs good. The reason I stayed with it were basically the steeper learning curve of RPL. I learned RPN while in school and am a full convert. I vaguely remember playing with a 48 once about 20 years ago and did not have time to become familiar with it. That's the main reason that I would have probably picked a WP-34S or a 35s as a replacement had my 32S bit the dust, I could just pick them up and work immediately.

Now that I'm familiar with the 50g, it would be my work calculator should I ever be able to do that again. It's capabilities, larger screen, and logical arangement once you learn the basics of RPL are just too big of an advantage to pass up. Wish I had one in the Mojave when working there 7 years ago. With it's capabilities, and a little programming time, I would have not had to wait to get back to the office for numerical answers. In this case, having the capability would have enabled a different approach to the work in a few instances. Being in the chemical industry though would probably have killed a couple of 50g's from corrosion, but it would have been an acceptable price to pay. Oh, and the games are fun too!!!

As far as actual applications, running filtration trials there are many data points to record and flow rates are calculated by volume change over discrete time intervals. Most of the time one needs to convert a linear tank reading into the volume. All trials are timed and the 50g is very powerful for this.

For other processes, the throughput and/or efficiency is determined by a specific material balance. A little programming would have put this in my pocket for answers right in the control room. I would have liked to have a pump curve program, and still may write one just for fun if I can find some relationships to work with. Steam tables !!!! etc

Looking back, I can understand my thinking at the time. Most of the calculating was done in the office with Excel. Also, in the modern work environment, one finds oneself always on the steep part of some other learning curve constantly, usually more than one at a time. With corporate e-mail and meetings out of control and the occasional workforce reduction, there wasn't enough time to do your main job justice. But, not needing to worry about any of that now, I've had time really enjoy the 50g.

Mark