Even if you're pretty good at doing math in your head, there are so many different measures that you may often find yourself needing to do conversions. For example, when I'm watching tennis on TV and the announcer says the serve was 220 kilometers per hour, I'm fairly clueless. So I just ask Siri to convert to the more familiar mph. (And that would be 137 mph—definitely a fast serve.) Siri can convert currencies and also measures such as distance, weight, volume, cooking measures, temperature, and speed. Plus, since the introduction of iOS 9, there are two ways to get Siri to do conversions: ask Siri or use Spotlight Search—which is basically sending Siri a text message.
To ask Siri verbally, simply press the Home button. To ask Siri using Spotlight Search, either swipe down from the center of any Home screen to bring up the Search bar or swipe right from your first Home screen to open Spotlight. Here, you can type the same questions you would ask. What kind of questions? Check out your many options below.
Currencies may be the most common need, since even if you can do math in your head, the relative value of currencies is constantly fluctuating. In order to convert currencies, you can ask, for example, "How many euros is $200?" Siri will answer, "200 US dollars converts to about 177.53 euros." Or you can ask, "How much is 500 rubles in US dollars?" and Siri will answer, "500 Russian rubles converts to about 9.05 US dollars."
To convert speeds, you can simply say, "220 kilometers per hour in miles per hour." Siri will answer "220 kilometers per hour converts to about 137 miles per hour."
Other measures you can ask Siri include:
Weights: How many kilograms is 120 pounds?
Fluids: How many gallons is 75 liters?
Temperatures: What's 105 degrees in Celsius?
Cooking: How many teaspoons in a tablespoon?
Distance: How many feet in 1 kilometer?
Area: How many square meters in a square mile?
Time: What time is it in London?
Decimals: What's the decimal of five sixteenths?
Fractions: What fraction is .28?
Water weight: How many pounds is 5 gallons of water?
Siri even knows measures such as the hand, which is used to measure the height of horses. You can ask, "How many feet is 12 hands?"
Of course, all of these conversions come to you courtesy of WolframAlpha, which unfortunately is only available in English.
Top image credit: Gabriele Maltinti / Shutterstock.com
