I'm trying to translate some Excel functions into an Access query but
I'm very ignorant regarding Excel functions and hope someone can
enlighten me!

The person who created the particular Excel functions used "T". Two
examples:

=0.5+0.001*T-0.0000005*T^2
=997.18+0.0031*T-0.0004*T*T

I've looked up T in the help file:
"Returns the text referred to by value."

Considering that the cells with the above functions are numeric as are
all of the cells on the sheet - what the heck are these functions
doing and why were they written this way?

Thanks in advance!