About Gender
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German nouns have three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter plus the plural form. In English, "he" and "she" are reserved for things that are obviously male or female, while "it" is used for all inanimate things, with a few obvious exceptions such as referring to ships as "she". However in German inanimate objects have been allocated male, female or neuter gender without much apparent logic. Thus we have die Hose (trousers are feminine) and der Rock (skirts are masculine) and just to be really awkward das Schiff and das Madchen (German ships and little girls are neuter). This becomes important because while the articles used in English are always the same regardless of the gender of the noun ("the", "an" and "a"), in German the article changes depending on the gender of the noun or if the noun is a plural. So the word for "the" is "der" for masculine nouns, "die" for feminine and plural nouns and "das" for neuter nouns.
However this only true for nouns that take the nominative case. If the noun takes any of the other three cases the article changes. Again. That's why you need to use this calculator.
There are three ways to obtain the gender of a noun
Learn it
Look it up in a dictionary
Ask someone who can speak German
The way you cannot do it is to work it out logically from the object described by the noun.