To the Editor: In his letter in the January issue, "Lights Off for Savings," Bill Robba questioned the auto industry's idea of cars and trucks turning on their headlights when their engines turn on. The auto industry suggested it would be worth it "if it would save one life."

Robba asserted that "precious gasoline" was wasted by this suggestion. He estimates that 15,000 megawatts of power are wasted by 150 million vehicles.

Fifteen thousand megawatts are approximately equal to 51,200,000,000 Btu/hr. At 124,000 Btu per gallon of gas, this is approximately 413,000 gallons of gas per hour. Which is approximately 0.0028 gallon of gas per vehicle.

At $2.15 per gallon of gas, this is approximately $888,000 per hour. Which is approximately $0.0059 per vehicle.

Is this worth one life?

I think so.

Funda- mental Skills
Julie N. Strickland, Class of 2006
The University of Texas
Austin, Texas

To the Editor: Mark S. Hutchenreuther (Letters, December 2005) wondered if current students appreciate CAD programs and have used pencil and paper in drafting class.

All of the University of Texas engineering students are required to take introductory engineering courses (for example, ME 302: Introduction to Mechanical Engineering or ASE 302: Introduction to Aerospace Engineering). In those classes, we do make engineering drafting sketches with pencil and paper, tediously, as well as learn to use software programs to do the same. In addition to my intro engineering class, I took Introduction to Drafting at the local community college (where I earned my associate degree in engineering). Our teacher required us to learn proper lettering techniques in addition to the dimensionalized drawings.

I'll even go you one better: Though in my Linear Algebra (Matrices) class I also learned how to manipulate matrices using programs such as MatLab and Mathematica, calculators were prohibited on test day. That means we were required to manipulate matrices and even perform multiplication on our own.

Please look up course descriptions on your favorite university's Web site (perhaps www.utexas.edu). You may be surprised just how much information we are required to learn.

To the Editor: Although alternative fuels and fuel-efficient vehicles are conventional wisdom, they likely will always be one step short of being measurable factors in the international pricing of oil.

It is unfortunate that "The Petroleum Bomb" by George P. Shultz and R. James Woolsey (October 2005) continues to perpetuate the myth that unconventional oil is too costly. The Canadian tar sands are being developed at a cost of $12 U.S. a barrel, compared to the cost of producing Middle East oil at $2 per barrel. However, take note that no U.S. aircraft carrier task groups are required to defend the transportation corridors or the government of Canada.

The U.S. taxpayer is on the hook for a bill of roughly $27 for each of those Middle East barrels that make their way to the United States every day. To be clear, this is in addition to the daily quoted NYMEX price.

How can the U.S. afford to ignore a readily available, cost-effective, and secure source of oil?

To the Editor: I agree with former Secretary of State George Shultz and former CIA Director James Woolsey in their call for oil independence. They say that our nation's dependence on imported oil leaves our economy vulnerable to oil supply disruptions and jeopardizes our national security. They say that world oil supply lines are already vulnerable and will become more vulnerable in the future. Thus, in the economic and security interests of the U.S., oil independence must be pursued.

They say that our nation can make large reductions in oil imports in the area of transportation with the development of more fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles and development of alternative fuels such as bio-fuels.

I don't agree that oil independence can be achieved by transportation improvements and bio-fuels alone. World oil production will peak and decline in the next 50 years, while demand will increase tremendously. U.S. oil reserves in Alaska and elsewhere in America will never supply enough for oil independence.

Engineers and scientists have shown that our nation could achieve oil independence by relying on clean coal fuels and nuclear fuels, for about 300 years anyway. However, both coal and nuclear energy have their own detrimental side effects.

There are problems of mine tailings, mining safety, greenhouse gases, and nuclear waste transportation and disposal to be resolved. To achieve total energy independence, the U.S. will need to convert existing oil- and gas-fired power plants to clean coal-fired power plants and to build many new coal and nuclear plants to support the growth of energy needs.

Unfortunately, the U.S. will run out of coal and nuclear fuels within 300 years. Thus, the best long-term solution to energy independence is to add solar energy as a major component to the energy mix. Solar power does not have the side effects of oil, gas, coal, or nuclear energy. America should be taking the lead in the development of solar energy.

We need a policy that gives our nation energy independence and economic security from the world oil-exporting countries and terrorists who can easily disrupt these oil supply lines.

To the Editor: Knowing my passion for thermodynamics, my wife, Wiebke, got me the American Scientists stamps, which the United States Postal Service released in May 2005.

The stamps celebrate thermodynamicist Josiah Willard Gibbs, geneticist Barbara McClintock, mathematician John von Neumann, and physicist Richard P. Feynman. I was very pleased that Gibbs, the first American to receive a doctorate of engineering, in 1863, was chosen for a stamp.

Ring around the collar: The stamp that honors Josiah Gibbs and (below) a closeup view of the marks on his shirt collar.

Josiah Willard Gibbs was the founder of modern thermodynamics and a pioneer in graphical methods for thermal sciences. The combination of the two great principles of thermodynamics, the first law (conservation of energy) and the second law (the definition and behavior of entropy that describes the direction of natural processes) carry Gibbs's name, and the equation expressing this is generally known as the Gibbs equation. The ideas and concepts behind this equation are fundamental to thermodynamics and yield an enormous amount of depth; yet the equation can be written in a very simple form de = tdh - pdv. However, the Postal Service selected a rather complicated illustration as background: an entanglement of thermal coordinates.

I couldn't take my eyes off the Gibbs stamp. I noticed that there were some dark spots on his collar. A closer look under the microscope revealed a very pleasant discovery: the Gibbs equation is written on his collar. It is in the original form Gibbs reported on the second page of his paper, "Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids," published in the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy, 1873.

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