I hold a Chief Engineer's license for steam plants of any horsepower, a B.S. degree in Marine and Electrical Engineering and various stationary and refrigeration engineering licenses. In the old days, when I used to work on ocean going supertankers, my friends called me "Tanker Jim". My interests are mostly in the engineering field and photography.

Tanker Jim himself

Air Conditioning
When the cooling season starts, I put the air conditioner at 72� and leave it there. On a typical day when the outside temperature was 94�, The AC would run for 10 minutes and shut off for 16 minutes. You must remember that the AC cools not only the air but everything in the house. If I were to turn the thermostat up to 78� when I left the house, when I returned everything in the house (furniture, walls, ceiling, floor) would be at 78�. After resetting the thermostat to 72�, the AC would run a lot harder to remove the heat from everything. (The heat content of a 200 pound wooden desk is three times the heat content of all the air in a 12 X 15 foot room) My AC would then probably run for 15 minutes and shut off for only about 5 minutes before starting again due to the furniture, walls, etc. raising the temperature of the air right back up again. This is what causes people to say, "Boy, the AC really runs a lot. It's a good thing I don't keep it at 72 degrees all the time." This kind of logic is the enemy of engineering. Shutting off or turning up the AC thermostat does not stop heat from coming into the house during the day; it just means that there will be more heat that has to be removed when one returns home. There is a big difference between heat and temperature. You can put your hand into a 450� oven and not get burned by the air but lifting the lid off of a pot of boiling water can cause you to get severly burned by the 212� steam. The heat content of air is low, the heat content of steam is high.

The 200 miles per gallon carburetor.
Occasionally, one hears or reads about an automobile carburetor that was designed back in the 1930's /40's /50's /etc. that would enable a standard size automobile to be driven 200 /300 / 400 /etc. miles per gallon of gasoline. This invention was supposedly suppressed by the gasoline industry /automobile manufacturers /Republicans /etc. The plain truth of the matter is that it is impossible; can't be done. There is only so much energy available in a gallon of gasoline. Formulating all of the factors involved, as I have done, (energy, weight, wind resistance, rolling resistance, coefficient of resistance, etc.) shows that a 2000 lb automobile could get approximately 100 miles per gallon at 100% efficiency. 100% efficiency means that all of the energy of the gasoline is used to power the automobile; no energy is lost as heat. The radiator would no longer be needed, the engine would stay at room temperature and the exhaust would be cool. Clearly impossible.
Let's take a simple example. Most automobile engines operate at about 25% efficiency and get 20 to 25 miles per gallon of gasoline. At 100% efficiency they would get 80 to 100 miles per gallon. That is the maximum achievable and only with no heat loss to a radiator or the engine block itself.

Lotteries
If you purchase a lottery ticket in which you have to correctly choose 6 numbers out of 54, the odds on winning are 25,827,165 to 1. How can the chances of winning be shown graphically? Let us take a pile of 25,827,165 tickets, one of which has the winning number, and lay them end to end. If each ticket is 3 inches long, placed end to end they would form a line 1,222 miles long. You could have 6 rows of tickets running along a highway between Boston and New York, a distance of approximately 200 miles. If you felt lucky, you could get in your car and drive along this highway watching the tickets flash past for an hour or so and then stop and pick up one ticket. Those are the chances of you, yourself, winning. Of course, someone does win because all the tickets eventually get picked up by the millions of people traveling the same hypothetical highway.

Mutual Funds.
Equity/stock mutual funds have generally yielded over 15% over the last few years. The following table shows how that would compare with the 5% generally yielded by bank savings accounts per $1,000 investment:

At 5% interest, compounded yearly, capital doubles about every 15 years.
At 15% interest, compounded yearly, capital doubles about every 5 years.

    Over a 30 year period:

	5%				15%

 0 years	$1,000		0 years		$1,000    
15 years	$2,000		5 years		$2,000
30 years	$4,000		10 years	$4,000
				15 years	$8,000
				20 years	$16,000
				25 years	$32,000
				30 years	$64,000

Asbestos
I have read many articles on the non-dangers of asbestos and the unwarranted hysteria surrounding it. The following is taken from the New York Post Sept 1993:
"As a threat to public health, asbestos itself doesn't amount to much. Indeed, a Harvard University study has determined that an individual is 75 times more likely to die prematurely from the side effects of a diagnostic X-ray than from an encounter with asbestos... The general asbestos scare - to put it bluntly - is something of a hoax. Testimony that emerged in the course of 1970's litigation - litigation aimed at deep-pockets defendants - planted a perception in the public mind that the substance itself is dangerous...was there ever any proof. Hysteria? Yes. Evidence? No."

Refer to diagram 1.

Refer to diagrams 2 and 3.

Tanker Jim, I have a hard time remembering whether to multiply or divide when converting things like inches to millimeters. If there are 25.4mm per inch and I want to change 0.3 inches to mm, do I multiply or divide? Is there an easy way to remember? - Tommy

Tommy, why not just multiply everything; that is what you end up doing anyway. For example:

    2     3 
   --- � ---  =
    3     4
    
 To solve this, you invert the numerator and denominator of the divisor and then multiply. 

    2     4       8
   --- x ---  =  ---
    3     3       9 
     So, you see, you always end up multiplying. Remember "per" is the same as "divided by"

                          25.4MM
     25.4mm per inch  =  ---------
                          1 INCH
________________________________________

     To change 0.3 inch to millimeter (MM):

    .3 INCH    25.4MM
    -------- x ------   = 
        1       1INCH

     The "INCH" in the numerator and denominator will cancel out.

    .3 INCH  25.4MM           
    ------ x -------   =              
        1    60INCH

       .3     25.4MM
    ------ x -------   =   7.62MM
        1        1
________________________________________
     Suppose you were going the other way? How many inches is 47MM?

     47MM      25.4MM
    -------- x ---------   = 
        1       1 INCH

   Invert so the MM will cancel out.


      47MM         1 INCH
    --------   x   ---------   =     1.85 INCH
        1           25.4MM
________________________________________
   If you have a space 5 foot long and you want to place 3inch 
wide tiles on it, how many tiles would you need?


    5 FOOT           12 INCH          3 INCH
    --------      x  ---------      x   --------  =
    1 length          1 FOOT           1 tile  
 
  "FOOT" will cancel out as is; invert to cancel out "INCH"  

    5 FOOT          12 INCH         1 tile
    --------     x  ---------    x   ---------  =  20 tile/length
    1 length        1 FOOT          3 INCH
 

That happens because rolling resistance is greater than sliding resistance. Much, much greater, in fact. Once an object begins to slide, resistance becomes almost negligible. For example, if you place your back against a refrigerator, not on wheels, and push, as soon as it starts to slide it will shoot out and you will go plop on the floor. If it is on wheels, it will move slowly, due to the rolling resistance, and you can keep a steady push on it to keep it moving. It is easier to move a heavy object on rollers because you can keep it moving steadily but it will always move faster by sliding it. It just takes more effort to get it to start sliding and then to keep up with it, using less push, to keep it sliding.

Debbie, nuclear physics isn't my field, but I will try.
All the universe is composed of energy and nothing but energy. What we call matter is nothing but "compressed" energy. I am going to use a very loose analogy here; please bear with me.
Have you ever seen the heat waves rising out of a desert? Suppose you were to compress all those heat waves into a small sphere one inch in diameter? This compressed energy is what we call matter, an atom. If you were to fire a neutron bullet to pierce the outer surface of this sphere, like puncturing a balloon, Kabooom! all that sudden release of energy would cause a terrific explosion. The matter would no longer exist; it has been converted back to energy.
A chemical or physical reaction converts one form of matter to another form or forms of matter. If you were to burn one pound of coal in an enclosed room, you would find that the weight of the room and coal hasn't changed after burning the coal. The products of combustion would weigh the same as the lump of coal before burning.
If you were to use one pound of uranium to set off an atomic blast in an enclosed room, (a very strong room) you would find that after the explosion the weight of the room and the uranium has decreased by, say, 1/1000 (.001) pounds. You no longer have one pound of matter but .999 pounds. So .001 pounds of matter has been changed into energy. How much energy?
Using Einstein's formula e=mc� (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared)
Where:
m = .001 lbs
c = 186,000 miles/sec
� 5280 feet/mile =982,080,000 feet/sec.
Then:
e = .001 � 982,080,000 � 982,080,000 = 964,481,126,000,000 ft lbs/sec.

At 550 ft lbs/sec / horsepower = 1,753,602,047,000 horsepower.

That is a lot of energy and all accomplished by changing .001 pound of matter (compressed energy) into free energy.

Please come back soon and visit me. I may actually add something else to this page.

And now, take a moment to relax.
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