Sorting

Before we use any constants, let’s make them easy to find.

Sort by symbol

Good for glancing. E.g. scanning for
c is quicker than hunting for ‘Speed of light’.

Sort by title

Good for browsing. E.g. all the electron related constants are grouped together.

A bit on navigation

You can navigate with up or down arrow keys.

However…

As you enter a calculation, the calculator becomes the target or the focus of keyboard input. The drawer, on the other hand, has lost the focus and no longer respond to the arrow keys.

Drawer in focus

The drawer is ready to accept your
keyboard input.

Drawer not in focus

Notice the drawer is grayed out.
The calculator gets the input.

To move the focus back to the drawer, press:

⌃ ⇥   (control-tab)

(Press it again to move it back to the calculator.)

Inserting constants

Previously, you have to double-click to insert.
Now you can press:

⌃ ↩    (control-return)

Insert differently

If you want to insert the value instead, press:

⌥ ⌃ ↩    (option-control-return)

Homework

The History drawer also has 2 different insertions.
Find out what they are. It’s quite handy.

Recent constants

To illustrate, let’s insert the first 3 constants:

Bohr radius,
Standard atmosphere,
Fine structure constant

Magic Number remembers your recently used constants:

The most recent one is at the top of the list.

Let’s clear the display before we go on. With many constants on the display, it can get confusing.

The shortcut

Press ⌃K  (control-K) to insert the top (most recent) constant.

Press again for the next one down.
Repeat again to cycle through the list.

By default, Magic Number remembers the 5 most recent constants. You can have more.

With 10 constants to cycle through, there is another handy shortcut for you.

⇧⌃K  (shift-control-K)

It cycles through the constants in reverse.

One last thing, you can use these shortcuts anytime without opening the drawer.

Search

Let’s search for Planck constant.

1. Press  ⇧⌘ /   for search.
2. Start typing Planck. As you type, the results appear:
   

   

3. Press  ▼  to select Planck constant.
   

   

   Press  ↩  (return key) to insert.

You probably notice the constants also appear in menus.
This makes them searchable by OS X’s help search.

You can use the same technique to insert functions like Modulo.
Or use it when you can’t find a particular menu.

The ‘Insert’ menu

You briefly saw the ‘Insert’ menu in the last tip.

It offers 3 benefits:

• It exposes the constants to OS X so that you can search them (as in the last tip).
• Sometimes you are using another drawer, you can still browse and insert the constants. (When the mouse pointer is over the constant, the tooltip appears showing its value.)
• Another OS X hidden power:
  It lets you add a custom shortcut to the menu.
  This is our next tip.

Custom shortcut

This OS X tip works with most apps.
To create a shortcut, OS X needs to know:

1. The menu title.
2. The keyboard shortcut.

Example

Let’s create a custom shortcut for Speed of light.

We will use  ⌥ C  (option-C) for the shortcut.

1. The menu title

In general the menu title is the text you see in the menu.
In the case of constant menu, it is just the constant name.

We will have to type this menu title, with the exact spelling and capitalization. There is a less error prone way.

Let’s copy the menu title to save time.

Press  ⌘3  to open the Constant drawer.

Right-click or control-click ‘Speed of light…’ to bring up the contextual menu and choose ‘Copy Name’.

2. The keyboard shortcut

To create the shortcut, go to  Menu  >  System Preferences.
We are 4 clicks away.

1. Click the Keyboard icon.
2. Click the Shortcuts tab.
3. Select App Shortcuts on the left.
4. Click the  +  button.

To complete, we specify:

* You can paste the constant name.

If you look under Insert > Constant, you see the new shortcut:

Making constants

You can use the memory feature to make constants.
Memories are like variables. You can use letters a, b, k, m, n.

For example, to set m to 42, enter

m = 42

and press return.

Making it better

Sometimes those letters do not suit our needs. We can:

• Give it a meaningful name
  Instead of ‘m’ you can have longer name like ‘mass’.
• Create a custom shortcut
  Since memories are also available as menu, you can create a custom shortcut. (See the last tip.)

Example

The mass of deuteron is 3.343586e-27 kg.
Let’s save it for the future.

Enter ‘m = 3.343586e-27’ and hit return:

‘m’ is not a memorable name. Let’s rename it to ‘dm’.

Go to menu: Calculation > Memory Options…

You can see the new name is reflected instantly:

At this point, it’s natural to set a custom shortcut,
maybe option-d for deuteron. But let’s wait a minute.

Since custom shortcut ties to the memory name,
make sure you are happy with the name first.

The current name is OK.
But we can do better. Time for the next tip.

Subscripts

Constants such as Planck temperature has a subscript.

We can make subscript with underscore ‘_’.

For our deuteron mass example:

Named_m

Let’s try something descriptive:

Namedeuteron_mass

Automatic subscripts

In math, we often have variables like  a₁ , a₂ , a₃ … etc.

If your name ends with a number, it will conveniently become a subscript.
No need for ‘_’.

Examples:

NameM2

Nameabc123

Comments

1. In practice you probably use ‘m_d’ as the name for deuteron mass so that it is consistent with constants like electron mass.
2. If you really want ‘deuteron_mass’ instead of ‘deuteron_mass’,
   add ‘_’ before the name so that it becomes ‘_deuteron_mass’.

See the hidden value

Sometimes it’s useful to see the value behind a constant.
Maybe for checking or as a confirmation.

Imagine you are not sure what  h  is.

Press  ⌘I  to see its value briefly.

This trick also works for memories and tax rates.