So?  It still develops more power than the Freestar and the torque to do it
comes on at lower RPMs.  Ford would love to declare a higher HP number for
the Freestar, no matter what the RPM, but their crappy engine's power output
falls off dramatically above 4600RPM as it starts to shake itself apart.

So the Toyota downshifts if necessary.  Except that I haven't noticed that
mine ever downshifts on the freeway, unless I really want to accelerate.
It's not underpowered.

If the Ford's maximum HP and maximum torque are, as you point out, close
together, that describes an engine with a narrow power band - one that would
require more frequent shifting.

So you say, but you never bring out any facts and figures to support your
allegations.  Fact is, you're a blowhard.

Don't think the Freestar's engine is junk?  Don't take my word for it.
Check with Edmunds:
http://www.edmunds.com/new/2005/ford/freestar/100412870/researchlanding.html
"Unrefined powertrains with less horsepower and worse fuel mileage than most
competitors..."

I drive through the Sierra Nevadas frequently and the Rocky Mountains
once every few years.  Our V-6 Honda is much, much better at this than
is our V-6 Oldsmobile.

John

I own a pickup and a minivan, and I notice that pickups always fall behind
on grades because of their poor wind resistance. It is why hybrid technology
is wasted on pickups and SUVs for MPG and why huge engines are wasted on
them also. You can  push a billboard through the wind only so fast. It seems
like the fastest drivers on highways have Accords and Jettas.

The difference is in the rpm curves. It really all hinges on the torque
anyway, as you point out, since for a given torque the hp rises in
proportion to rpm.

The low end torque is stuff I never really got a handle on, but at the high
end (where most of the controversy is anyway) it is all related to
breathing. Things like intake and exhaust design and cam considerations of
valve lift, duration and overlap can increase the useful torque at high rpms
and thereby increase the maximum power.

The torque/power debate really comes down to gearing. If we could select any
gear ratio we wanted any time we wanted, we could make good use of maximum
power and nobody would talk about torque. Back in the real world, within
each gear ratio, the torque curve determines the acceleration we feel.

Mike

Re-read the chapters of the text on work, power, and torque.

No. Power is work delivered per unit time.

Google for explanations that will probably be better than any given off the
top of one's head here or at any personal web site.
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhorsepower.html  isn't bad.

--
Honda home studies: http://home.earthlink.net/~honda.lioness
--

At the risk of repeating what others and have said and what you
know already...

Torque is, basically, a rotational (ie, twisting) force.

HP (horsepower) is a rate of doing work, so can also be expressed
in units such as watts (the modern preference, 1 HP == 746 watts)
and BTU (if one must).

An easy way to remember the equivalence between Force, Distance
(over which the Force is used) and Work (another way of saying
Energy) is to recall that
    Work = Force * Distance

So Power, the Rate Of Doing Work, is
    Work / Time

Therefore the Work done by Torque is, in effect, the Force acting
at a certain Leverage distance, tracing a circular path around a
point, over a certain Time.

One final relationship:
    Torque = Force * Leverage
where Leverage is the distance between the line-of-action of the
Force and the pivot point, about which the Torque is calculated.

A 15 kilo Force pushing on a lever 2 metres long exerts a Torque
at the pivot point of 15*2 kilo-force-metres (not to be confused
with kilometres).  Most engineers use Newtons, not kilos-force:
    Newton = Kilo * 9.81 (approx)

So that Torque would actually be (about) 294.3 Newton-metres.

Back to the original question...

Work done in 1 revolution
    = 2 * pi * Leverage * Force
    = 2 * pi * Torque

So rate of doing work (ie, Power)
    = 2 * pi * Torque / Time_for_1_rev
    = 2 * pi * Torque * Revs_per_second
    = watts

Use Newton-metres here and it is a doddle to compute Power.  If
you absolutely must know the HP, divide Watts by 746.

(FWIW, AFAIK: 1 Pound-force-foot == 1.355818 Newton-metres.  And
for pi you can get by with 3.14159, though it goes on to many <g>
more significant digits than that.)

Grief, I hope I got that lot right.  <g>  If anyone knows better,
do let me know soon.

Torque X rotational speed = Power.   To get the units right in various
systems, a conversion factor is used.

A very good discussion is available on the web at:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhorsepower.html

Power is the ability to do work.  Work is needed to move a mass from one
place to another, to increase elevation, to increase velocity
(acceleration) and to overcome frictional losses like air resistance,
tire rolling resitance, etc.

Thus, for example, 200 ft. lbs. of torque at 4,000 RPM can accomplish
twice as much work as can 200 ft. lbs. of torque at 2,000 RPM.  Put
another way, 400 ft. lbs. at 1,000 RPM can do the same work as does 200
ft. lbs at 2,000 RPM.   For the units used in the US:

 Power (HP) = [Engine Speed (RPM) x Engine Torque (ft.lbs.)] / 5252

It is really that simple.

John

well, /we/ haven't handled it yet.  all we do is stick used rods into
tanks and leave them there.  we make no attempt to reprocess, and
frankly, all the money we're spending on storage is a /RIDICULOUS/ waste
if we have no intention of reprocessing!

others reprocess very successfully; they recover the useful stuff and
transform the non-useful stuff into a form that is /much/ safer for long
term storage.  again, simply storing unprocessed unmaterial is the worst
possible thing to do, but we're seemingly too paralysed by mass fear and
mass ignorance and gross misinformation to actually do anything
intelligent!!!

A broken clock is right twice a day - Mike isn't right even that regularly.

And it's hardly a trivial problem.  But it does come down to relative risk.
As
we recognize the risks inherent in burning fossil fuel, the nuclear option
looks more attractive even to some envrionmentalists.  And some - I'm one -
have favored it for many years.  The reason it's not more popular than it
is: it's going to be brought to you by the same people that ran Enron and
similar operations.  We should trust them?  I'd be much happier if you gave
the business over to the US Navy.  They have an impressive safety record
that hasn't been compromised by greed or politics.

The "Environmental Lobby" hasn't a tenth the cash available to the "Oil/Gas
Lobby."  The only reason the Enviros have as much support and visibility as
they do is that the science is generally on their side.  Oily cash can only
go so far.  Contrary to what most people believe, there's a fair amount of
consensus among climatologists and atmospheric scientists that rising
levels of CO2 are attributed to man's activities (deforestation and fossil
fuel use) and that this will lead to SOME change.

We're gambling for very high stakes.  Covering our bets, by slowing the
rates of human-induced change would make sense to me.  The fossil fuel
industries won't give up their short-term profits, so they put up cash to
fight the science.

It's a matter of priorities.  I certainly don't want people freezing to
death to save a trivial amount of oil but our priorities for the last 20
years have been to build bigger cars and houses, not to find ways to reduce,
reuse and recycle.  That attitude is going to bite us in the a.s.

And there's an economic reason to be out in front on environmental issues -
the country that builds the next generation of solar cells (or other energy
source) will have an economic advantage.  We can be that country but it
takes investment to do it.  US Corporations would rather puff up executive
salaries than hire engineers and chemists.  A recent post said that India's
graduating 350,000 engineers/year to our 70,000.  I believe it.  And their
science is the same as ours, they can make the same advances that we can but
they're more likely to do it because they're able to put more people on it.
Why is
Toyota on its third generation of hybrid?  Because it's a short-term money
maker?  Hardly, they think they can own the hybrid market further down the
road.  They're going for strategic advantage.

Don't limt yourself to thinking about the energy industry, either.  Where
was the last big story on advances in cloning?  South Korea.  By the way,
they didn't achieve that by insisting Intelligent Design be taught in high
school.

Come to think of it, there's a second economic reason to be out in front on
environmental issues - reducing oil imports would reduce our balance of
trade problem.  We're $66 billion in the hole this month and a projected
$700 billion for the year.  To put that in perspective, that's like the
mortgage on 3 million reaonably-priced houses.  Except we're probably going
to mortgage another 3 million houses next year and it's trending worse.  If
we start exporting whatever alternative energy products we develop, that
will also help fix the balance of trade problem.

Nuclear waste disposal is NOT a scientific problem throughout the world, it
is only a political problem in the US. Environuts are opposed to the dispose
of it in the ground from which it came, as they do in other counties.  We
now store it less safely under six feet of water at the sites.

mike hunt

 Sorry, but no.  That's not the primary reason why the visibility
balls are placed, or they would be installed on all power lines.

 The power lines in selected locations tend to snag more METAL birds
than live birds as they fly past, I.E. light airplanes and
helicopters.   Some power lines cross small valleys and rivers
laterally from peak to peak, and the power transmission wires can be
very high over the terrain below - where a pilot following visual
flight rules would assume he has clear air.  If the light is wrong,
you can't see those wires till you are right on top of them.

 All it takes is the local radio station's traffic reporting plane or
the local police patrol helicopter flying too low in the wrong place,
trying to spot a traffic tie-up or follow a pursuit.  If they happen
by at the same altitude as the power lines, it gets really messy.

 The visibility balls on the static wire are there to show the wire
location clearly, even in low visibility conditions where the pilots
can't see the towers.

    --<< Bruce >>--

 Yeah, it is - and here's the top two hits I got, which
coincidentally enough show the other side:

http://www.homepower.com/files/birds.pdf

 They have a sound theory that may explain the few places that bird
strikes are concentrated in, namely the Altamont Pass near San
Francisco - agricultural pesticides are used on rodents, raptors eat
the rodents, and are drugging the raptors so stupid they're flying
into the generators - even when they are not turning at the time.

 A bird flying into a stationary tower or a stationary wind turbine
blade is not the fault of the tower.  It's the bird's responsibility
to spot and navigate around fixed obstacles.  They have eyes.  Too bad
they're connected to a brain the size of a pea.

And the other - http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html

 Wow - all those birds running into lighted and checkerboard-painted
radio towers, and the sides of fixed buildings....

 To conclude:  It's tough to be a bird.

      --<< Bruce >>--