A scientific calculator is a calculator with all the arithmetic capabilities of a basic calculator plus trigonometric, statistical, logarithmic, binary logic, etc. which are useful in various scientific applications. A typical scientific calculator has some forty to fifty keys and is capable of performing about twice as many operations than that (necessitating a “Shift” or “2nd” key). They are often capable of displaying results in binary, octal and hexadecimal, but are usually limited to integers in those bases.

The calculator trigonometric functions are , , and , which have their own keys. The arc versions of these are usually obtainable by using the “Shift” or “2nd” key.

A scientific calculator may have a single memory register with the associated keys M+, MR and MC, but they often have several more registers to hold various values for use in statistical computations.

For values greater than about or smaller than (slightly more or less depending on the model) hardware scientific calculators must switch to scientific notation.