The number of Step-by-Step explanations in Wolfram|Alpha has been getting larger and larger. One of the latest step by step solutions we have been providing is the addition and subtraction of quantities. This includes working with quantities with different units of measurement, handling of decimal points and doing unit conversions. Let's look over at some of this new functionalities.

Let's start with a straightforward example: the sums of 2 meters and 3 meters:

Summing Quantities with Different Units of Measurements

One of the most common issues that one encounters when summing physical quantities is summing quantities which have the same physical dimension (e.g., Length, Time, Mass) but different units of measurement, for example, such as feet and meters. Wolfram|Alpha provides steps for getting the result in any of the units that appears in the input. Are you summing meters and feet? We'll return a step-by-step solution for the end unit in meters and another with the end unit in feet.

Decimal Quantities

A lot of real world calculations requires working with quantities that have decimal and significant digits. Here for example we are subtracting 12 astronomical units to 3.5 parsecs:

Sum and Subtraction of Multiple Quantities

The step-by-step addition and subtraction of quantities can be extended to sum of more than two numbers!

An example of this below. As you can see you can choose the result to be in any of the units appearing in the sum:

Conclusion

We hope this new functionality will help you when studying or for checking your calculations. Stay tuned for upcoming posts, such as exploring how to perform multiplication of quantities Step-by-Step.