Google Calculator can now graph functions, still won’t do your math homework

Google added another feature to their constantly growing bag of tricks – the simple calculator feature of Google Search has grown a graphing calculator. You just type in a function (e.g. sin(x) * x) and you’ll get an interactive plot of the function as the top search result.

You can pan around and zoom in and out, check the value of the function at any point you like and even plot multiple functions (separate them with a comma). All this is done with HTML5 plus SVG, there’s no Flash used (so it should run problem-free on devices without Flash support).

Now, the calculator is pretty simple – it won’t plot inequalities, or functions of multiple variables or anything complex like that. What you do get is to use all the functions that the Google Calculator has and there are quite a few of those.

So, while it won’t replace proper graphing calculators or sites like Wolfram Alpha, it’s the quickest way to see what the plot of a function looks like. Go on, try it. You know you want to try out that Batman equation to see if it works.